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BY EDWARD CARPENTER 

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 
LOVERS COMING'OF'AGE 

A Series of Papers on the Relations of 
the Sexes 

THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

A Study of Human Evolution and Trans' 
figuration 

THE INTERMEDIATE SEX 

A Study of Some Traditional Types of 
Men and Women 

INTERMEDIATE TYPES AMONG PRIMITIVE FOLK 

A Study in Social Evolution 

IOLAUS 

An Anthology of Friendship 



THE DRAMA 
OF LOVE AND DEATH 

A Study 

of Human Evolution and 

Transfiguration 

By 

Edward Carpenter 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

MITCHELL KENNERLEY 
1912 



Copyright 1912 by 
Mitchell Kennerley 



.C-E5 









Contents 

CHAP. PAGE 

The Delphian Sibyl overlooking the Earth vii 

I. Introduction i 

II. The Beginnings of Love ... 5 

III. Love as an Art 24 

IV. Its Ultimate Meanings ... 48 
V. The Art of Dying .... 69 

VI. The Passage of Death.- ... 87 

Note on Consciousness in the Body . 107 

VII. Is THERE AN AfTER-DeATH STATE ? . Ill 

VIII. The Underlying Self . . . .131 

Note on Mediumistic Trance . . 1 56 

IX. Survival of the Self . . . .162 

X. The Inner or Spiritual Body . .176 

XL The Creation and Materialization of 

Forms 192 

XII. Reincarnation 215 

XIII. The Divine Soul 237 

XIV. The Return Journey .... 248 
XV. The Mystery of Personality . . 262 

XVI. Conclusion . . . . . . 284 

Appendix 289 



THE DELPHIAN SIBYL 

\(Qu her mountain-slope overlooking the Earth) 

The coastline ranges far, the skies unfold; 

The mountains rise in glory, stair on stair; 
The darting Sun seeks Daphne as of old 

In thickets dark where laurel blooms are fair. 
The ancient sea, deep wrinkled, ever young, 

With salt Up kisses still the silver strand; 
In caverns dwell the Nymphs, their loves among, 

And Titans still with strange fire shake the land. 

A thousand generations here have come, 

And wandered o'er these hills, and faced the light; 

A thousand times slight man from mortal womb 
Has leapt, and lapsed again into the night. 

Here tribesmen dwelt, and fought, and curst their star, 
And scoured both land and sea to sate their needs; 

Prophetic eyes of youth gazed here afar, 

With lips half open brooding on great deeds. 

vii 



THE DELPHIAN SIBYL 

Nor dreamed each little mortal of the Past, 

Nor the deep sources of his life divined, 
Watching his herds, or net in ocean cast, 

Deaf to th' ancestral voices down the wind; 
Nor guessed what strange sweet likenesses should rise, 

Selves of himself, far in the future years, 
With his own soul within their sunlit eyes, 

And in their hearts his secret hopes and fears. 

Yet I — / saw. Yea, from my lofty stand 

I saw each life continuous extend 
Beyond its mortal bound, and reach a hand 

To others and to others without end. 
I saw the generations like a river 

Flow down from age to age, and all the vast 
Complex of human passion float and quiver — 

A wondrous mirror where the Gods were glassed. 

And still through all these ages scarce a change 

Has touched my mountain slopes or seaward curve, 
And still the folk beneath the old laws range, 

And from their ancient customs hardly swerve; 
Still Love and Death, veiled figures, hand in hand, 

Move o'er mens heads, dread, irresistible, 
To ope the portals of that other land 

Where the great Voices sound and Visions dwell. 



via 



THE DRAMA OF LOVE 
AND DEATH 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY 

Love and Death move through this world of 
ours like things apart — underrunning it truly, and 
everywhere present, yet seeming to belong to 
some other mode of existence. When Death 
comes, breaking into the circle of our friends, 
words fail us, our mental machinery ceases to 
operate, all our little stores of wit and wisdom, 
our maxims, our mottoes, accumulated from daily 
experience, evaporate and are of no avail. These 
things do not seem to touch or illuminate in any 
effective way the strange vast Presence whose 
wings darken the world for us. And with Love, 
though in an opposite sense, it is the same. 
Words are of no use, all our philosophy fails — 
whether to account for the pain, or to fortify 
against the glamour, or to describe the glory of 
the experience. 

These figures, Love and Death, move through 

I 



2 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

the world, like closest friends indeed, never far 
separate, and together dominating it in a kind of 
triumphant superiority; and yet like bitterest 
enemies, dogging each other's footsteps, undoing 
each other's work, fighting for the bodies and 
souls of mankind. 

Is it possible that at length and after ages we 
may attain to liberate ourselves from their over- 
lordship — to dominate them and make them our 
ministers and attendants? Can we wrest them 
from their seeming tyranny over the human race, 
and from their hostility to each other? Can we 
persuade them to lay aside their disguise and 
appear to us for what they no doubt are — even 
the angels and messengers of a new order of 
existence ? 

It is a great and difficult enterprise. Yet it is 
one, I think, which we of this generation cannot 
avoid. We can no longer turn our faces away 
from Death, and make as if we did not perceive 
his presence or hear his challenge. This age, 
which is learning to look the facts of Nature 
steadily in the face, and see through them, must 
also learn to face this ultimate fact and look 
through it. And it will surely — and perhaps only 
— be by allying ourselves to Love that we shall be 
able to do so — that we shall succeed in our en- 
deavor. 

For after all it is not in the main on account 
of ourselves that we cherish a grudge against the 
'common enemy' and dispute his authority, but 
for the sake of those we love. For ourselves 



INTRODUCTORY $ 

we may be indifferent or acquiescent; but some- 
how for those others, for those divine ones who 
have taken our hearts into their keeping, we 
resent the idea that they can perish. We re- 
fuse to entertain the thought. Love in some 
mysterious way forbids the fear of death. 
Whether it be Siegfried who tramples the flaming 
circle underfoot, or the Prince of Heaven who 
breaks his way through the enchanted thicket, or 
Orpheus who reaches his Eurydice even in the 
jaws of hell, or Hercules who wrestles with the 
lord of the underworld for Alcestis — the ancient 
instinct of mankind has declared in no uncertain 
tone that in this last encounter Love must 
vanquish. 

It is in the name, then, of one of these gods 
that we challenge the other. And yet not 
without gratitude to both. For it is Azrael's 
invasion of our world, it is his challenge to us, 
that (perhaps more than anything else) rivets our 
loyalty to each other. It is his frown that 
wakes friendship in human souls and causes them 
to tighten the bonds of mutual devotion. In 
some strange way these two, though seeming 
enemies, play into each other's hands; each holds 
the secret of the other, and between them they 
conceal a kindred life and some common intimate 
relation. We feel this in our inmost intuitions; 
we perceive it in our daily survey of human 
affairs; and we find it illustrated (as I shall 
presently point out) in general biology and the 
life-histories of the most primitive cells. The 



4 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

theme, in fact, of the interplay of Love and 
Death will run like a thread-motive through this 
book — not without some illumination, as I would 
hope, cast by each upon the other, and by both 
upon our human destiny. 



CHAPTER II 

THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE 

As I have just suggested, the great human prob- 
lems of Love and Death are strangely and re- 
markably illustrated in the most primitive forms 
of life; and I shall consequently make no apology 
for detaining the reader for a few moments over 
modern investigations into the subjects of cell- 
growth, reproduction and death. If this chap- 
ter is a little technical and complex in places, still 
it may be worth while delaying over it, and grant- 
ing it some patient consideration, on account of 
the curious light the study throws on the rest of 
the book and the general questions therein dis- 
cussed. 

Love seems to be primarily (and perhaps 
ultimately) an interchange of essences. The 
Protozoa — those earliest cells, the progenitors 
of the whole animal and vegetable kingdom — 
grow by feeding on the minute particles which 
they find in the fluid surrounding them. The 
growth continues, till ultimately, reaching the 
limit of convenient size, a cell divides into two or 
more portions; and so reproduces itself. The de- 
scendant cells or portions so thrown off are sim- 
ply continuations, by division, of the life of the 

5 



6 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

original or parent cell — so that it has not unfre- 
quently been said that, in a sense, these Protozoa 
are immortal, since their life continues indefinitely 
(with branching but without break) from genera- 
tion to generation. This form of reproduction 
by simple budding or division extends even up 
into the higher types of life, where it is some- 
times found side by side with the later sexual 
form of reproduction, as in the case of so-called 
parthenogenesis among insects. It is indeed a 
kind of virgin-birth; and is well illustrated in the 
vegetable world by the budding of bulbs, or by 
the fact that a twig torn from a shrub and placed 
in the ground will commonly grow and continue 
the life of the parent plant; or in the lower 
stages of the animal world, where, among 
many of the worms, insects, sponges, &c, 
the life may similarly be continued by divi- 
sion, or by the extrusion of a bud or an 
egg, without any sex-contact or sex-action 
whatever. 

This seems in fact to be the original and 
primitive form of generation; and it obviously 
depends upon growth. Generation is the super- 
fluity, the v/?pis, of growth, and connects itself 
in the first instance with the satisfaction of 
hunger. First hunger, then growth, then re- 
production by division or budding. And this 
process may go on apparently for many genera- 
tions without change — in the case of certain 
Protozoa even to hundreds of generations. But 
a time comes when the growth-power and energy 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE 7 

decay, and the vitality diminishes 1 — at any rate, 
as a rule. 2 But then a variation occurs. Two 
cells unite, exchange fluids, and part again. It 
is a new form of nourishment; it is the earliest 
form of Love. It is a very intimate form of 
nourishment; for it appears that in general the 
nuclei themselves of the two cells are shared and 
in part exchanged. And the vitality so obtained 
gives the cells a new lease of life. They are 
in fact regenerated. And each partner grows 
again actively and reproduces itself by budding 
and division as before. Sometimes the two 
uniting cells will remain conjoined; and the 
joint cell will then generate buds, or in some 
cases enlarge to bursting point, and so, perishing 
itself, break up into a numerous progeny. 3 

^77 n w? Vember 7 18 ? 5 ' M * Mau P as isola ted an infusorian 
ilsl Br lL P A' tUla !S h a "erved its generations till MareS 
mS?; J j hat . tlme tl \ ere had been 215 generations produced by 
ordinary division, and since these lowly organisms do not con 
jugate with near relatives, there had of course been no sexual 
union.-What was the result? At the date referred to the 
family was observed to have exhausted itself. The members 
though not exactly old, were being born old. ThTTexuai 

iZZv^^jV^ff' "?? ?/p—s of nutrition were 
also lost (Evolution of Sex, Geddes and Thomson, 1901, p. 

reco S rded h oT7« ' Evolut J on °f Sex, p. 178, where a case is 
recorded of 458 generations of another infusorian apparently 
w thout degeneration. See also The Cell, by Dr OsTS 
wig (Sonnenschein, 1909), p. 292 

weU T illiiS^y ? °i life ~ elem / nts between two individuals is 
well illustrated m the case of the infusorian Noctiluca. Two 

Noctilucas, A and B, {gj^ coalesce . and then Iater ^^ 

formed *iZ Jl T*??' T W0 new individuals \re thus 
ThrifjJi' h NoctlIuca has absorbed half of the other 
Their activities are regenerated and they begin a new life 



8 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

So far there seems to be but little differentia- 
tion between Hunger and Love. Love is only 
a special hunger which leads cells to obtain 
nourishment from other cells of the same species; 
and generation or reproduction in these early 
stages, being an inevitable accompaniment of 
growth, follows on the satisfaction of love just 
as it follows on the satisfaction of hunger. 
Rolph's words on the relation of these two im- 
pulses (quoted by Geddes and Thompson) are 
very suggestive. He says: — "Conjugation occurs 
when nutrition Is diminished. ... It is a neces- 
sity for satisfaction, a growing hunger, which 
drives the animal to engulf its neighbor, to 
'isophagy.' The process of conjugation is only 
a special form of nutrition, which occurs on a 
reduction of the nutritive income, or an increase 
of the nutritive needs." 

And so far there is no distinction of sex. It 
is true there may be sex in the sense of union or 
fusion between two individuals; but there is no 
distinction of sex, in the sense of male and 
female; In the Protozoa generally there is 
simple union or conjugation between cells, which, 
as far as can be observed, are quite similar to each 
other. It is a union between similars; and it 
leads to growth and reproduction. But both 
union and reproduction at this early stage exist 
quite independently of any distinctive sex-action, 
or any differentiation of individuals into male and 
female. 

At a later period, however, Sex comes in. It 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE 9 

is obvious that for growth (and reproduction) two 
things are necessary, which are in some degree 
antagonistic to each other — on the one hand the 
pursuit and capture of food, which means activity 
and force, and on the other hand the digestion 
and assimilation of the food, which means 
quiescence and passivity. And it seems that at a 
certain stage — in general, when "animals" have 
already been formed by the conjunction of many 
protozoic cells in co-operative colonies — this 
differentiation sets in, and some individuals 
specialize towards activity and the chase, while 
others (of the same species) specialize towards 
repose and assimilation. The two sets of 
qualities are clearly only useful in combination 
with each other, and yet, as I have said, they are 
to some degree contrary to each other; and 
therefore it is quite natural that the two corre- 
sponding groups of individuals should form two 
great branches in each race, diverse yet united. 

These two branches are the male and female — 
the active, energy-spending, hungry, food-ob- 
taining branch; and the sessile, non-active, 
assimilative and reproductive branch. And by 
the division of labor consequent on the forma- 
tion of these two branches the whole race is 
benefited; but only of course on condition that 
the diverse elements are reunited from time to 
time. It is in the fusion of these elements that 
the real quality and character of the race is 
restored; and it is by their fusion that develop- 
ment and reproduction are secured. 



10 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

In some of the Infusorians 1 there seems to be 
a beginning of sex-differentiation, and fusion 
takes place between two individuals slightly 
differing from each other; but as we have already- 
seen, in most of the Protozoa the union is a 
union of similars — that is, as far as can at present 
be observed, though of course there is a great 
probability that here also there is generally some 
difference which supplies the attraction and the 
value of union. 2 

It is in the Metazoa generally, and those forms 
of life which consist of co-operative colonies of 
cells, that sex-differentiation into male and 
female begins to decisively assert itself. Here — 
since it is obviously impossible for all the cells of 
one individual to fuse with all the cells of another 
— certain special cells are set apart in each 
organism for the purpose of union or conjuga- 
tion; and it seems quite natural that in the 
course of time the differentiation spoken of above, 
into male and female, should set in — each in- 
dividual tending to become decisively either 
masculine or feminine — both in the sex-cells or 
sex-apparatus, and (though in a less marked 
degree) in the general 'body' and structure. 

In the lower forms of life, generally, as among 

*As in Volvox; see Evolution of Sex, p. 138. 

2 And we may say also here that it is even supposable that 
the special differentiation which we call male and female is 
only one out of many possible sex-differentiations — the im- 
portant and main condition being that the differentiations, 
whatever they are, should be complementary to each other, 
and should together make up the total qualities and character 
of the race. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE II 

the amphibia, fishes, molluscs, &c., the male and 
female sex-cells — the sperm and the germ — do not 
conjugate within either of the parent bodies, but 
are expelled from each, in order to meet and fuse 
in some surrounding medium, like water. There 
the double cell, so formed, develops into the new 
individual. But in higher forms the meeting 
takes place, and the first stages of development 
ensue, within one of the bodies. And, as one 
might expect, this occurs within the body of the 
female. For the female, as we have said, repre- 
sents quiescence, growth, assimilation. The germ 
or ovum is large compared with the spermato- 
zoon; it is also sessile in habit. The spermato- 
zoon, on the other hand, is exceedingly active. 
And so it seems natural that the latter should 
seek out the germ within the body of the female. 
Just as, in general, the female animal remains 
impassive and quiescent, and is sought out by 
the male, so the female germ remains at home 
within the female body, and receives its visitor or 
visitors there. And the whole apparatus of 
connection is symbolical of this relation. The 
body of the female is the temple in which the 
sacred mystery of the union or fusion of two 
individuals is completed, as a means to the birth 
or creation of a new individual. 

Yet though the female is thus privileged to 
be the receptacle and sanctum of the life-giving 
power, it must not be thought that this argues 
superiority of the female, as such, over the 
male. The process of conjunction is sometimes 



12 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

spoken of as a fertilization merely, implying 
the idea that the ovum or female element is 
the main thing, and that this only requires a 
slight impulse or stimulus from the male side 
for its powers of development to be started and 
set in operation. But though it is true that the 
ovum can in many cases of the lower forms of 
life be started developing by the administration 
of a chemical solution or even a mechanical 
needle-prick, this development does not seem to 
continue; and modern investigation shows that 
in normal fecundation an absolute equality reigns, 
as far as we can see, between the two contracting 
parties and their contributions to the new being 
that has to be formed. 

Nothing is more astounding than the results of 
these investigations; and they not only show us 
that the protozoic cells (and sex-cells), instead 
of being very simple in structure, are already 
extremely complex, and that their changes in 
the act of fertilization or fusion are strangely 
elaborate and systematic; but they suggest that 
though to us these cells may represent the 
microscopic beginnings of life in its most primi- 
tive stages, in reality they stand for the first 
visible results of long antecedent operations, and 
indicate highly organized and, we may say, 
intelligent forces at work within them. 

The mere process by which a primitive cell 
divides and reproduces itself has an air of 
demonic intelligence about it. Roughly, the 
process may be described as follows. The 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE 1 3 

nucleus appears to be the most important por- 
tion of a cell. Certainly it is so as regards the 
supply of hereditary and formative material — the 
surrounding protoplasm fulfilling more of a nu- 
tritive and protective function. Within and 
through the liquid of the nucleus there spreads 
an irregular network of a substance which is 
(for a purely accidental reason) called chromatin. 
As long as the nucleus is at rest, this network 
is fairly evenly distributed through it; but the 
first oncoming of division is signalled by the 
break-up of the chromatin into a limited and 
definite number of short, threadlike bodies— to 
which the name chromosomes has been gifen. 
These chromosomes, after some curious evolutions, 
finally arrange themselves in a line across the 
middle of the nucleus; and they^are apparently 
governed in this operation, and the whole split- 
ting of the cell is governed, by a minute, star- 
like and radiating centre (called centrosome), 
which first appearing outside the nucleus and 
in the general protoplasm of the cell, seems to 
play a dominant part in the whole process. 
This centrosome, when the time comes for the 
cell-division, itself divides in two, and the two 
starlike centres so formed (which are to become 
centrosomes of the two new cells), slowly move 
to opposite ends or poles of the original cell — 
all the time, as they do so, throwing out raylike 
threads or fibrils which connect them somehow 
with the chromosomes and which seem to regulate 
the movements of the latter, till, as described, 



14 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

the latter form themselves in a line across the 
centre of the cell, transversely to the line join- 
ing the poles. At this stage, then, we have a 
tiny, starlike centrosome at each end of the cell, 
and a transverse line of chromosomes between. 
(Also, during the process the wall or enclosing 
membrane of the nucleus has disappeared and 
the general contents of cell and nucleus have 
become undivided.) It is at this moment that 
the real division begins. The chromosomes — 
of which it is said that there are always a definite 
and invariable number for every species of plant 
or animal, 1 and which are now generally sup- 
posed to contain the hereditary elements or 
determinants of the future individual — these 
chromosomes have already arranged themselves 
longitudinally and end-on to each other across 
the middle of the cell. They now, apparently 
under the influence of the radiating points at 
each pole, split longitudinally (as one splits a 
log of wood) — so that each chromosome, 
dividing throughout its length, contributes one 
half of itself to one pole and one half to the 
other. The halves so formed separate, and 
approach their respective poles; and at the same 
time the cell-wall constricting itself along the 
equatorial line, or line of separation, soon 
divides the original cell into two. Mean- 
while the chromosomes in each new division 
group themselves (not round but) near their 

1 As sixteen for a human being, twelve for a grasshopper, 
twenty-four for a lily, and so forth. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE 1 5 

respective poles or centrosomes, and a new 
nucleus membrane forming, encloses each group, 
so that finally we have two cells of exactly the 
same constitution as the original one, and with 
exactly the same number and quality of chromo- 
somes as the original. 1 

The whole process seems very strange and 
wonderful. No military evolutions and forma- 
tions, no complex and mystic dance of initiates 
in a temple, with advances and retreats, and 
combinations and separations, and exchanges of 
partners, could seem more fraught with intelli- 
gence. 2 Yet this is what takes place among 
some of the very lowest forms of life, on the 
division of a single cell into two. And it is 
exactly the same, apparently, which takes place 
in the higher forms of life when the single cell 

1 For diagram and illustration of this whole process, see 
Appendix, infra, p. 289. Also see August Forel's The Sexual 
Question (English translation; Rebman, 1908), pp. 6 and 11; 
The World of Life, by A. R. Wallace, ch. xvii, p. 343; The 
Plant Cell, by H. A. Haig (Griffin, 1910), ch. viii; and other 
books. 

2 Stephane Leduc, in his Theorie Physico-chSrnique de la vie 
(Paris, 1910), endeavors to trace all the above phenomena to 
the simple action of diffusion and osmose (see ch. viii, on 
Karyokinesis) but though the resemblance of some of the 
forms above described to diffusion-figures is interesting — as 
also is their resemblance to the forms of magnetic fields — 
this does not prove their genesis either from diffusion or mag- 
netism. It only makes probable that some of the phenomena 
in question are related to the very obscure forces of diffusion 
or magnetism — a thing which, of course, is already admitted 
and recognized. With regard to all this the reader should 
study the astonishing resurrection of the mature blow-fly 
from the mere milky pap which is all that the pupa at a cer- 
tain stage consists of. (See The Biology of the Seasons, by 
J. Arthur Thomson, 1911.) 



1 6 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

which is the result of the fusion together of 
the sperm-cell and the germ-cell, divides and 
subdivides to form the 'body' of the creature. 
As is well known, the joint cell divides first into 
two; then each of the cells so formed divides 
into two, making four in all; then each of 
these divides into two, making eight; then each 
into two again, making 16, 32, 64, and so on 
— till they number the thousands, hundreds of 
thousands, millions, which in effect build up 
and constitute the body. And at each division 
the process is carried out with this amazing 
care and exactness of partition described — so that 
every cell is verily continuous and of the same 
nature with the original cell, and contains the 
same nuclear elements, derived half from the 
father and half from the mother. Yet in the 
process a differentiation has set in, so that in 
the end each cell becomes so far modified as to 
be adapted for its special position and function 
in the body — for the skin, mucous membrane, 
blood corpuscles, brain, muscular tissue, and so 
forth. 1 It is worth while looking carefully at 
the body of an animal, or one's own body, in 
order to realize what this means — to realize that 
the entire creature, in all its form and feature, 

1 "In every known case an essential phenomenon of fertiliza- 
tion is the union of a sperm nucleus of paternal origin with an 
egg nucleus of maternal origin, to form the primary nucleus 
of the embryo. This nucleus . . . gives rise by division to all 
the nuclei of the body, and hence every nucleus of the child 
may contain nuclear substance derived from both parents" 
(The Cell in Development and Inheritance, by E. B. Wilson, 
Macmillan Co., 1904, p. 182). 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE 1 7 

its coloring, marking, swiftness of limb, com- 
plexity of brain, and so on, has provably been 
exhaled from a single cell, is indeed that original 
cell with its latent powers and virtue made mani- 
fest; and to remember that that original cell 
was itself the fusion of two parent cells, the male 
and the female. 

A word, then, upon this matter of the fusion 
of the two parent cells in one. Here, again, two 
very remarkable things appear. One refers to 
the equality of the sexes; the other refers to 
the onesidedness (or deficiency or imperfection) 
which seems to be the characteristic and the 
motive power of the phenomenon of sex. 

With regard to the first point, we saw that 
among the Protozoa conjugation occurs for the 
most part between two individual cells which 
are alike in size and (to all appearance) alike 
in constitution; and this conjugation leads to 
reproduction. But when among the higher 
forms sex begins to show, the conjugating cells 
— sperm-cell and germ-cell — are generally unlike 
in size, and often in the higher animals extremely 
unlike — as in the human spermatozoon and ovum, 
of which the latter is a thousand times the 
volume of the former; 1 and this has sometimes 
led, as remarked before, to an exaggerated view 
of the preponderant importance of one sex. But 
the curious fact seems to be that when the 
spermatozoon of the human or higher animal 

1 The latter, of course, being just discernible by the naked 
eye. 



1 8 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

penetrates the ovum, there is a preliminary 
period before its nucleus actually combines with 
the nucleus of the ovum, during which the 
nucleus rapidly absorbs nourishment from the 
surrounding protoplasm, and grows — grows till 
it becomes of exactly the same size as the nucleus 
of the ovum. The situation then is that there 
are two nuclei of the same size and both charged 
with chromatin of the same general character, 
in close proximity, and waiting to fuse with 
each other. 

The product of that fusion is a new being; 
and as far as can at present apparently be ob- 
served, the parts played by the two sexes in the 
process are quite equal. There may be difference 
of function but there is no inequality. "Both 
male and female cells," says Professor Rolleston, 1 
"prepare themselves for conjugation long before 
it takes place, and neither of them can be said 
to be a more active agent in fertilization than 
the other. Not 'fertilization' but 'fusion' is 
the keyword of the process. The mystical con- 
ception, as old as Plato, of the male and female 
as representing respectively the two halves of 
a complete being, turns out to be no poetic 
metaphor. As regards the essential features of 
reproduction, it is a literal fact." 

The second remarkable point has to do with 
the onesidedness of sexual conjugation, and the 
complementary nature of the exchange involved. 

1 Parallel Paths, by T. W. Rolleston (Duckworth, 1908), 
p. 53. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE 1 9 

This is truly noteworthy and interesting. It 
is evident that if the sperm-cell and germ-cell 
simply coalesced, containing each the amount of 
chromatin characteristic of the species — say sixteen 
chromosomes in the case of the human being — 
the result would be a cell with double the proper 
amount, say thirty-two chromosomes, i.e. an 
amount belonging to another species. "What hap- 
pens is that each of the reproductive cells, male 
and female, prepares itself for conjugation by get- 
ting rid of half its chromosomes. Two divisions 
of the nucleus take place, not as in the ordinary 
fashion of cell-division, when the chromosomes 
split longitudinally, but in such a way that, 
in each division, four of the sixteen chromo- 
somes (making eight in all) are bodily expelled 
from the nucleus and from the cell, when they 
either perish, or, in some cases, appear to help 
in forming an envelope of nutritive matter 
round the germ-cell. These divisions are called 
'maturation divisions, 1 and until they are accom- 
plished fecundation is impossible." 1 Thus the 
two nuclei, having each their number of chromo- 
somes reduced to half the normal number (in 
this case to eight), are now ready to coalesce 

1 Parallel Paths, p. 52. See also, for further accounts, The 
Evolution of Sex, pp. 112-14; The Plant Cell, by H. A. Haig, 
pp. 121, 123 et seq.; Die Vererbung, by Dr. E. Teichmann 
(Stuttgart, 1908), pp. 39, 40, &c. Throughout it must be 
remembered that these 'maturation' processes in the genera- 
tive cells are not only exceedingly complex, but also very 
various in the various plants and animals; and the reader 
should be warned against too easily accepting ready-made 
descriptions and generalizations supposed to fit all cases. 



20 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

and so form a new cell with the proper number 
belonging to the species (i.e. sixteen). This cell 
is the commencement of the new being, and, 
as already described, it divides and re-divides, 
and the innumerable cells so formed differentiate 
themselves into different tissues, until the whole 
animal is built up. 

Says Professor E. B. Wilson: — "The one fact 
of maturation that stands out with perfect clear- 
ness and certainty amid all the controversies 
surrounding it, is a reduction of the number of 
chromosomes in the ultimate germ [and sperm~\ 
cells 1 to one half the number characteristic of 
the somatic cells. It is equally clear that this 
reduction is a preparation of the germ [and 
sperm] cells for their subsequent union, and a 
means by which the number of chromosomes is 
held constant in the species." 2 

This extrusion or expulsion by each of the 
conjugating cells of half its constituent elements 
is certainly very strange. 3 And it seems strangely 
deliberate. 4 Various theories have been formed 
on the subject, but at present there is apparently 
no satisfactory conclusion as to what exactly takes 

1 Here and elsewhere in his book Professor Wilson uses 
"germ-cells" to include "sperm-cells"; and I have indicated 
this bv the bracket. 

2 The Cell, p. 285. 

8 It appears that in the ordinary conjugation of Protozoa a 
quite similar process is observable. 

4 "Nowhere in the history of the cell do we find so unmis- 
takable and striking an adaptation of means to ends or one 
of so marked a prophetic character, since maturation looks 
not to the present but to the future of the germ [and sperm] 
cells" {The Cell, p. 233). 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE 21 

place. Some think that in the one case certain 
male elements are expelled, and in the other case 
certain female elements; and anyhow it seems 
probable that a complementary action sets in, by 
which each prepares itself to supply a different 
class of elements from the other, tlius rendering 
the conjunction more effectual. Plato has been 
already quoted with regard to male and female 
being only the two halves of a complete original 
being. He also says (in the speech of Socrates 
in the Banquet) that the mother of Love was 
Poverty, and that Love "possesses thus far his 
mother's nature that he is ever the companion 
of Want." And it would appear that in the 
most primitive grades of life the same is true, 
and that two cells combine or coalesce in order 
to mutually supply some want or deficiency. 

Anyhow, in the process just described two points 
stand out pretty clear: first, the exact quality 
of the number of chromosomes contributed by 
sperm-cell and germ-cell to the fertilized ovum — 
which seems to indicate that the descendant being 
has an equal heredity from each parent 1 — though 
of course it does not follow that both heredities 
become equally prominent or manifest in the 

1 It might be said that, notwithstanding this, the female 
obviously has the greater sway, on account of the conjunction 
taking place within the body of the mother, and subject to 
all her influences. But there is a curious compensation to this 
in the fact that while after conjugation the centrosome of the 
germ-cell disappears, the male centrosome is retained and be- 
comes the organ of division for the new cell, and consequently 
for the whole future body. (See Parallel Paths, p. 56; also 
Professor E. B. Wilson in The Cell, p. 171.) 



22 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

descendant body; and secondly, that the same is 
true of all the cells in this new body — that they 
each contain the potentialities of the joint cell 
from which they sprang, and therefore the poten- 
tialities of both parents. 

These amazing conclusions concerning the 
origins of life and reproduction — here, of course, 
very briefly and imperfectly presented — cannot 
but give us pause. Contemplating the evolutions 
and affinities of these infinitely numerous but 
infinitely small organisms which build up our 
visible selves, and the strange intelligence which 
seems to pervade their movements, the mind 
reels — somewhat as it does in contemplating the 
evolutions and affinities of the unimaginable 
stars. 1 We seem, certainly, to trace the same 
laws or operations in these minutest regions as 
we trace in our own corporeal and mental rela- 
tions. Cells attract each other just as human 
beings do; and the attraction seems to depend, 
to a certain degree, on difference. The male 
spermatozoon seeks the female ovum, just as the 
male animal, as a rule, seeks and pursues the 
female. Primitive cells divide and redivide and 
differentiate themselves, building up the animal 
body, just in the same way as primitive thoughts 
and emotions divide and redivide and differen- 
tiate themselves, building up the human mind. 
But though we thus see processes with which 

1 "That a cell can carry with it the sum total of the heritage 
of the species, that it can in the course of a few days or weeks 
give rise to a mollusk or a man, is the greatest marvel of 
biological science" (The Cell, p. 396). 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE 23 

we are familiar repeated in infinitesimal miniature, 
we seem to be no nearer than before to any 
'explanation' of them, and we seem to see no 
promise of any explanation. We merely obtain 
a larger perspective, and a suggestion that the 
universal order is of the same character through- 
out — with a suspicion perhaps that the explana- 
tion of these processes does not lie in any 
concatenation of the things themselves, but in 
some other plane of being of which these con- 
catenations are an allegory or symbolic expres- 
sion. In portions of the following chapters I 
shall trace more in detail the resemblance or 
parallelism between these processes among the 
Protozoa and some of our own experiences in the 
great matters of Life and Love and Death. 1 

*For summary of the conclusions of this chapter, see 
Appendix, infra, p. 289. 



CHAPTER III 

LOVE AS AN ART 

The astounding revelation of the first great love 
is a thing which the youthful human being can 
hardly be prepared for, since indeed it cannot 
very well be described in advance, or put into 
terms of reasonable and well-conducted words. 
To feel — for instance — one's whole internal 
economy in process of being melted out and 
removed to a distance, as it were into the keeping 
of some one else, is in itself a strange physio- 
logical or psychological experience — and one 
difficult to record in properly scientific terms ! 
To lose consciousness never for a moment of 
the painful void so created — a void and a hunger 
which permeates all the arteries and organs, and 
every cranny of the body and the mind, and 
which seems to rob the organism of its strength, 
sometimes even to threaten it with ruin; to 
forego all interest in life, except in one thing — 
and that thing a person; to be aware, on the 
other hand, with strange elation and joy, that 
this new person or presence is infusing itself 
into one's most intimate being — pervading all the 
channels, with promise (at least) of marriage and 
new life to every minutest cell, and causing 

H 



LOVE AS AN ART 25 

wonderful upheavals and transformations in tis- 
sue and fluids; to find in the mind all objects of 
perception to be changed and different from what 
they were before; and to be dimly conscious that 
the reason why they are so is because the back- 
ground and constitution of the perceiving mind 
is itself changed — that, as it were, there is an- 
other person beholding them as well as oneself — 
all this defies description in words, or any possibil- 
ity of exact statement beforehand; and yet the 
actual fact when it arrives is overwhelming in 
solid force and reality. If, besides, to the 
insurgence of these strange emotions we add — 
in the earliest stages of love at least — their be- 
wildering fluctuation, from the deeps of vain 
longing and desire to the confident and ecstatic 
heights of expectation or fulfilment — the very 
joys of heaven and pangs of hell in swift and 
tantalizing alternation — the whole new experience 
is so extraordinary, so unrelated to ordinary work- 
a-day life, that to recite it is often only to raise 
a smile of dismissal of the subject — as it were 
into the land of dreams. 

And yet, as we have indicated, the thing, what- 
ever it is, is certainly by no means insubstantial 
and unreal. Nothing seems indeed more certain 
than that in this strange revolution in the rela- 
tions of two people to each other — called "falling 
in love" — and behind all the illusions connected 
with it, something is happening, something very 
real, very important. The falling-in-love may 
be reciprocal, or it may be onesided; it may 



26 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

be successful, or it may be unsuccessful; It may 
be only a surface indication of other and very 
different events ; but anyhow, deep down in the 
sub-conscious world, something is happening. It 
may be that two unseen and only dimly suspected 
existences are becoming really and permanently 
united; it may be that for a certain period, or 
(what perhaps comes to the same thing) that 
to a certain depth, they are transfusing and 
profoundly modifying each other; it may be 
that the mingling of elements and the transforma- 
tion is taking place almost entirely in one person, 
and only to a slight degree or hardly at all in 
the other; yet in all these cases — beneath the 
illusions, the misapprehensions, the mirage and 
the maya, the surface satisfactions and the 
internal disappointments — something very real is 
happening, an important growth and evolution 
is taking place. 

To understand this phenomenon in some slight 
degree, to have some inkling of the points of 
the compass by which to steer over this ex- 
ceedingly troubled sea, is, one might say, indis- 
pensable for every youthful human creature; 
but alas ! the instruction is not provided — for 
indeed, as things are to-day, the adult and the 
mature are themselves without knowledge, and 
their eyes without speculation on the subject. 
Treatises on the Art of Love truly exist — and 
some (for the field they cover) very good ones, 
like the Ars Amatoria of Ovid or the Kama-sutra 
of Vatsayana; but they are concerned mainly 



LOVE AS AN ART 27 

or wholly with the details and technicalities of 
the subject — with the conduct of intrigues and 
amours, with times and seasons, positions and 
preparations, unguents and influences. It is like 
instructions given to a boatman on the minutiae 
of his craft — how to contend with wind and 
wave, how to use sail and oar, to steer, to tack, 
to luff to a breaker, and so forth; all very good 
and necessary in their way, but who is there 
to point us our course over the great Ocean, 
and the stars by which to direct it? The later 
works on this great subject — though not despising 
the more elementary aspects — will no doubt 
have to proceed much farther, into the deep 
realms of psychology, biological science, and 
ultimately of religion. 1 

As we have just said, Love is concerned with 
growth and evolution. It is — though as yet 
hardly acknowledged in that connection — a root- 
factor of ordinary human growth; for in so 
far as it is a hunger of the individual, the satis- 
faction of that hunger is necessary for individual 
growth — necessary (in its various forms) for 
physical, mental and spiritual nourishment, for 
health, mental energy, large affectional capacity, 
and so forth. And it is — though this too is 
not sufficiently acknowledged — a root-factor of 
the Evolution process. For in so far as it 

1 Havelock Ellis's very fine essay on "The Art of Love" 
(see his Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. vi, ch. xi) must 
also be mentioned, as including much of the subject matter 
of the above treatises, but having a very much wider scope 
and outlook. 



28 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

represents and gives rise to the union of two 
beings in a new form, it plainly represents a step 
in Evolution, and plainly suggests that the direc- 
tion of that step will somehow depend upon the 
character and quality of the love concerned. 
Thus the importance, the necessity, of the study 
of the art of love is forced on our attention. 
It has to be no longer a subterranean, unrecog- 
nized, and even rather disreputable cult, but an 
openly acknowledged and honorable department 
of human life, leading in its due time to broad 
and commonsense instructions and initiations for 
the young. 

Casting a glance back at the love-affairs of 
the Protozoa, as briefly described in the preced- 
ing chapter, there certainly seems to be a kind of 
naive charm about them. The simple and whole- 
hearted way in which on occasions they fuse 
with one another, losing or merging completely 
their own separate individualities in the process; 
or again part from each other after having ex- 
changed essences in a kind of affectionate can- 
nibalism; the obvious and unconcealed relation 
between love and hunger; the first beginnings 
of generation; and the matter-of-fact manner in 
which one person, when he finds it convenient, 
divides in half and becomes two persons, and 
after a time perhaps divides again and becomes 
four persons, and again and again until he is 
many thousands or millions — and yet it is im- 
possible to decide (and he himself probably is 



LOVE AS AN ART 29 

not quite clear) as to whether he is still one 
person or different persons — all this cannot fail 
to excite our admiration and respect, nor to 
give us, also, considerable food for thought. 

One of the first things to strike us, and to 
suggest an application to human life, is the 
importance of Love, among these little creatures, 
for the health of the individual. The authors of 
The Evolution of Sex say in one passage (p. 178) : 
"Without it [conjugation], the Protozoa, which 
some have called 'immortal,' die a natural 
death. Conjugation is the necessary condition 
of their eternal youth and immortality. Even 
at this low level, only through the fire of love 
can the phoenix of the species renew its youth." 
And again, in another passage (p. 277), referring 
to the conclusions of Maupas : "Already we have 
noted this important result, that conjugation is 
essential to the health of the species." Thus 
it appears that, in these primitive stages, fusion 
more or less complete, or interchange of essences, 
leads to Regeneration and renewal of vitality — 
and this long before the distinct phenomena of sex 
appear. It leads to Regeneration first, and so 
collaterally, and at a later period, to Generation. 

Somehow — though it is not quite clear how — 
this view of the importance of love to personal 
health has been sadly obscured in later and 
Christian times. The dominant Christian attitude 
converted love, from being an expression and 
activity of the deepest human life and joy, into 
being simply a vulgar necessity for the propagation 



30 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

of the species. A violent effort was made to 
wrench apart the spiritual and corporeal aspects 
of it. The one aspect was belauded, the other 
condemned. The first was relegated to heaven, 
the second was given its conge to another place. 
Corporeal intercourse and the propagation of 
the race were vile necessities. True affection 
dwelt in the skies and disdained all earthly 
contacts. And yet all this was a vain effort to 
separate what could not be separated. It was 
like trying to take the pigments out of a picture; 
to call the picture "good," but the stuff it was 
painted with "bad." 

And so, owing to this denial, owing to this 
non-recognition of love (in all its aspects) as 
necessary to personal health, thousands and 
thousands of men and women through the cen- 
turies — some "for the kingdom of heaven's 
sake," and some for the sake of the conventions 
of society — have allowed their lives to be maimed 
and blighted, their health and personal well-being 
ruined. The deep well-spring and source of human 
activity and vitality has been desecrated and 
choked with rubbish. That some sort of purpose, 
in the evolution of humanity, may have been ful- 
filled by this strange negation, it would be idle 
to deny; indeed some such purpose — in view 
of the wide prevalence of the negation, and its 
long continuance during the civilization period — 
seems probable. But this does not in any way 
controvert the fact that it has in its time caused 
a disastrous crippling of human health and 



LOVE AS AN ART 3T 

vitality. Human progress takes place, no doubt, 
in sections — one foot forward at a time, so to 
speak; but this does not mean that the other 
foot can be permanently left in the rear. On 
the contrary, it means its all the more decided 
advance when its turn arrives. 

To-day we seem at the outset of a new era, 
and preparing in some way for the rehabilitation 
of the Pagan conception of the world. The 
negative Christian dispensation is rapidly ap- 
proaching its close; the necessity of love in its 
various forms, as part and parcel of a healthy 
life, is compelling our attention. No one is 
so poor a physiognomist as not to recognize the 
health-giving effects of successful courtship — the 
heightened color, the brilliant eye, the elastic 
step; the active brain, the prompt reflexes, the 
glad outlook on the world. Indeed the effect 
upon all the tissues — their nourishment, growth, 
improvement in tone, and so forth — is extraor- 
dinary; and yet — remembering what has been 
said about Love and Hunger — quite natural. 
For, after all, we have seen that every cell in 
the body is a replica of the original cell from 
which it sprang; and so the love which reaches 
one probably in some way reaches all. And 
there is probably not only union and exchange 
(in actual intercourse) between two special sex- 
cells; but there is also {all through the period 
of being "in love") an etheric union and ex- 
change going on between the body-cells gener- 
ally on each side; and a nourishment of each 



32 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

other by the interchange of finest and subtlest 
elements. 

That this mutual exchange and nutrition may 
take place between the general cells of two bodies 
is made all the more probable from the experi- 
ments already alluded to with regard to chemical 
fertilization — whereby it has been shown that 
some ova or egg-cells may be started on a process 
of subdivision and growth by treatment with 
certain chemicals, such as weak solutions of 
strychnine, or common salt, apart from any 
fertilization by a spermatozoon. 1 Now since — 
when the body is once fairly formed — its further 
growth and sustenance is maintained by continued 
division and subdivision of the body-cells, this 
stimulus to growth may easily (we may suppose) 
be supplied by the subtle radiations and reactions 
from another body within whose sphere of in- 
fluence it comes — radiations and reactions suffi- 
ciently subtle to pass through the tissues to the 
various cells, and of course sufficiently charac- 
teristic and individual to be in some cases, as we 
have supposed, highly vitalizing and stimulating 
— though in other cases of course they may be 
poisonous and harmful. Of course, also, it is 
only love that supplies and is the vitalizing 
relation. 

So intense, at times, is this vitalizing force, and 

x See The Cell, by E. B. Wilson, p. 391; Das Leben, by 
Jacques Loeb (Leipzig, 1911), pp. 10-20, &c. It seems also 
to be thought that gall-formations on plants, tumors on ani- 
mal bodies, &c, are instances of such chemical or indirect 
fertilization. 



LOVE AS AN ART 33 

so ardent the need of it, that the whole body 
leaps and throbs in pain. Plato, in his poetic 
way, explains the scorching sensation in all the 
skin and tissues by feigning that it is caused by 
the wing-feathers of the soul sprouting every- 
where (i.e. according to our view, in every little 
cell). Nevertheless, his words on the subject are 
singularly pregnant with meaning. For he says 
(in the Phadrus) : "Whenever indeed by gaz- 
ing on the beauty of the beloved object, and 
receiving from that beauty particles which fall and 
flow in upon it (and which are therefore called 
'desire'), the soul is watered and warmed, it is 
relieved from its pain, and is glad; but as soon as 
it is parted from its love, and for lack of that 
moisture is parched, the mouths of the outlets by 
which the feathers start become so closed up by 
drought, that they obstruct the shooting germs; 
and the germs being thus confined underneath, in 
company of the desire which has been infused, 
leap like throbbing arteries, and prick each at the 
outlet which is closed against it; so that the soul, 
being stung all over, is frantic with pain." 1 

This fusion of complementaries, then, which 
is the characteristic of fertilization, takes place 
between the lovers — not only in respect of their 
sex-cells, but probably also to a considerable 
degree in respect of their body-cells. And 
though with any mortal lovers the complementary 
nature of the fusion can hardly be so complete as 

1 Translation by J. Wright, M.A., Golden Treasury Series, 
p. 57. 



34 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

to restore the full glory of the race-life, yet very 
near to that point it sometimes comes, filling 
them with mad and immortal-seeming ecstasies, 
and excusing them indeed for seriously thinking 
that the wings of their souls have begun to grow ! 
In lesser degree this complementary fusion and 
exchange is doubtless the explanation (or one 
explanation) of that very noticeable point — the 
strange way in which lovers after some years come 
to resemble each other — in form and feature, in 
facial expression, tone of voice, carriage of body, 
handwriting, and all sorts of minute points. 

I suppose at this point it will be necessary to 
explain that the recognition of love (in all its 
aspects) as a general condition of human health, 
does not mean a recommendation of wild indul- 
gence in any and every passion — necessary, 
because in these cases it seems to be generally 
assumed that the proposer of a very simple 
thesis means a very great deal more than he says ! 
It is here that the necessity of education comes 
in; for hitherto public instruction and discussion 
in these matters have been so defective that folk 
have been unable to talk about them except in a 
hysterical way — hysterical on the one side or the 
other. The positive value of love, its positive 
cultivation as a gracious, superb, and necessary 
part of our lives has hardly (at least in the 
Anglo-Saxon world) entered into people's minds. 
To teach young things to love, and how to love, 
to actually instruct and encourage them in the art, 



LOVE AS AN ART 2S 

has seemed something wicked and unspeak- 
able. Says Havelock Ellis: 1 "Whether or not 
Christianity is to be held responsible, it cannot be 
doubted that throughout Christendom there has 
been a lamentable failure to recognize the supreme 
importance, not only erotically but morally, of 
the art of love. Even in the great revival of 
sexual enlightenment now taking place around us 
there is rarely even the faintest recognition that in 
sexual enlightenment the one thing essentially 
necessary is a knowledge of the art of love. For 
the most part sexual instruction, as at present 
understood, is purely negative, a mere string of. 
thou-shalt-nots. If that failure were due to the 
conscious and deliberate recognition that while 
the art of love must be based on physiological 
and psychological knowledge, it is far too subtle* 
too complex, too personal, to be formulated in 
lectures and manuals, it would be reasonable and 
sound. But it seems to rest entirely on igno 
ranee, indifference, or worse." 

It is, I think, not unfair to suppose that it is 
this indifference or vulgar Philistinism which is 
largely responsible for the sordid commercialism 
of the good people of the last century. Finding 
the lute and the lyre snatched from their hands 
they were fain to turn to a greater activity with 
the muck-rake. 

Love is a complex of human relations — 
physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and so 
1 Psychology of Sex, vol. vi. p. 517. 



36 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

forth — all more or less necessary. And though 
seldom realized complete, it is felt, and feels 
itself, to be imperfect without some representa- 
tion of every side. To limit it to the expres- 
sion of one particular aspect would be totally 
inadequate, if not absurd and impossible. A 
merely physical love, for instance, on the sexual 
plane, is an absurdity, a dead letter — the enjoy- 
ment and fruition of the physical depending so 
much on the feeling expressed, that without the 
latter there is next to no satisfaction. At best 
there is merely a negative pleasure, a relief, 
arising from the solution of a previous state of 
corporeal tension. And in such cases intercourse 
is easily followed by depression and disappoint- 
ment. For if there is not enough of the more 
subtle and durable elements in love, to remain 
after the physical has been satisfied, and to hold 
the two parties close together, why, the last state 
may well be worse than the first! 

But equally absurd is any attempt to limit, 
for instance, to the mental plane, and to make 
love a matter of affectionate letter-writing merely, 
or of concordant views on political economy; or 
again, to confine it to the emotional plane, and 
the region of more or less sloppy sentiment; or 
to the spiritual, with a somewhat lofty contempt 
of the material — in which case it tends, as hinted 
before, to become too like trying to paint a 
picture without the use of pigments. All the 
phases are necessary, or at least desirable — even 
if, as already said, a quite complete and all-round 



LOVE AS AN ART 37 

relation is seldom realized. The physical is de- 
sirable, for many very obvious reasons — including 
corporeal needs and health, and perhaps especially 
because it acts in the way of removal of barriers, 
and so opens the path to other intimacies. The 
mental is desirable, to give form and outline to 
the relation; the emotional, to provide the some- 
thing to be expressed; and the spiritual to give 
permanence and absolute solidity to the whole 
structure. 

It is probably on account of this complex 
nature that for any big and permanent relation- 
ship of this kind there has to be a rather slow 
and gradual culmination. All the various ele- 
ments have to be hunted up and brought into 
line. Like all great ideas love has its two sides 
— its instantaneous inner side, and its complex 
outer side of innumerable detail. In consciousness 
it tends to appear in a flash — simple, unique, and 
unchangeable; but in experience it has to be 
worked out with much labor. All the elements 
have to come into operation, and to contribute 
their respective quota to the total result. If we 
remember what happens when the spermatozoon 
and the ovum coalesce (see ch. ii. p. 19) — the 
extraordinary changes and disturbances which are 
induced in the chromatin elements of both nuclei, 
the fusion of the nuclei, and the ultimate ranging 
of the chromosomes in a line (for the formation 
of the new being) in such a way that every 
element is represented and contributes its share 
to the process — we cannot but be struck by the 



38 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

strange similarity to our own inner experience: 
how love searches the heart, drags every element 
of the inner nature forward from its lurking- 
place, gives it definition and shape, and somehow 
insists on it being represented, and, so to speak, 
toeing the line. We shall return to this point 
later. Here I only wish to insist on the com- 
plexity of the process, in order to show that 
for any big relationship plenty of time has to be 
allowed. Whichever side of the nature — mental, 
emotional, physical, and so forth — may have 
happened to take the lead, it must not and 
cannot monopolize the affair. It must drag the 
other sides in and give them their place. And 
this means time, and temporary bewilderment 
and confusion. It is curious how 'falling in 
love' has this very effect — how it paralyzes for 
a time — inhibiting the mental part and even the 
physical; how the smart talker becomes a dumb 
ass, and the man about town a modest fool, and 
the person who always does the right thing seems 
compelled to do everything wrong — as if a con- 
fusion were being created in the mind, analogous 
to that which we have observed in the cells. 
When we add to these considerations the ex- 
traordinary differences between persons, and be- 
tween the proportions in which the elements of 
their characters are mixed, it is obvious how ex- 
tremely complex the conditions of any one decent 
love-relation must be, and what tact and patience 
in the handling it may require. 

The ignorance, therefore, which causes a young 



LOVE AS AN ART 39 

man, husband or lover, to think that the hurried 
completion of the sexual act is at once the initia- 
tion and the fulfilment of love, is fatal enough. 
It marks more often the end than the beginning 
of the affair. For, contrariwise, time and plenty 
of time has to be given in order to allow the 
central radiation in each case to have its perfect 
work. Is it too fanciful to suppose that the 
centrosome, which makes its appearance in the 
protozoon on its approach to conjunction, and 
which seems to rule the rearrangement of the 
chromatin elements within it, is the analogue 
of the radiating force in human courtship which 
so strangely sifts out and remoulds the elements 
of the lover's personality? Does the magic of 
the centrosome correspond in some sense to the 
glamour, so well known in human affairs? And 
do they both proceed from some deep-hidden, 
profoundly important manifestation of the life, 
the energy, the divinity if you will, of the Race? 
How strange is this matter of the glamour, 
and its decisiveness in awakening love by its 
presence, or leaving it cold by absence ! Here 
is a story of a woman who, dreadfully disfigured 
in countenance by an accident in the hunting- 
field, called her fiance to her, and nobly offered 
him his freedom; and he . . . accepted it! Ac- 
cepted it, because, quite really and truly, the de- 
struction of her physical beauty had for him shat- 
tered the Vision and the divinity. And here is 
another similar story where, contrariwise, the 
man immediately confirmed his love and devotion 



40 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

— because for him the glory around her was more 
illumined by her nobility of feeling than it could 
be darkened by her bodily defect. 

Such glamour, working away in the hidden 
caverns of being, may at last, like Bruno's "fabro 
vulcano," weld two souls into one, and bring 
to light a real, a profound, and perhaps eternal 
union. It is after all that inner union which 
is the real thing; which gives all its joys to inter- 
course, and penetrating down into the world 
of sense, redeems that world into a thing of 
glory and beauty. For the complete action of 
that creative and organizing force plentiful time 
must be given; and the two lovers must possess 
their souls in patience till it has had its full 
and perfect work. Ovid in his Ars Amatoria 
has many lines on this subject. "Let the youth," 
he says, "with tardy passion burn, like a damp 
torch" . . . "Non est Veneris properanda voluptas" 
, . . "Quod datum ex facili longum male nutrit 
amorem" (Love easily granted may not long en- 
dure), and so forth. And though these passages 
no doubt refer mainly to what may be called the 
practical conduct of amours, yet they have also a 
very pointed application to the more important 
aspects of the grand passion. A long foreground 
of approach, time and tact, diffusion of mag- 
netism, mergence in one another, suffering, and 
even pain — all these must be expected and al- 
lowed for — though the best after all, in this as in 
other things, is often the unexpected and the un- 
prepared. 



LOVE AS AN ART 4 1 

And if the man has to allow time for all 
the elements of his nature to come forward and 
take their part in the great mystery, all the more 
is it true that he has to give the woman time 
for the fulfilling of her part. For in general 
it may be said (though of course with exceptions) 
that love culminates more slowly in women than 
in men. Men concentrate obviously on the 
definite part they have to play; but in women 
love is more diffused and takes longer to reach 
the point where it becomes an inspired and 
creative frenzy of the whole being. Caresses, 
tendernesses, provocation, sacrifices, and a thou- 
sand indirect influences have to gradually conspire 
to the working out of this result; and not 
infrequently the situation so arising demands 
great self-control on the part of the man. Yet 
these things are worth while. "The real mar- 
riage," says some one, u takes place when from 
their intense love there comes to birth another 
soul — apart from each, and invisible, yet joining 
them together, one hand ahold of each — a radiant 
thing born of the sun and stars, which though 
tender and fragile at first, grows just like a 
bodily child, and leads them on, and dances with 
them." 

They are worth while, all these labors and 
troubles, and delays and sacrifices, if only out 
of them can be forged a fair and infrangible 
union. As in all the arts, so in the greatest 
of the arts, no lasting result can be attained, 
without such labor. Nor indeed without some 



42 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

degree of pain and suffering. Young folk and 
inexperienced may think it is not so. They may 
think that by a lucky stroke and practically 
without effort a man may write a "Blessed 
Damozel" or carve in marble a "Greek Slave"; 
but all experience points differently, and shows 
that directly or indirectly to such works have 
gone infinite labor and patience. And so to 
the conceiving and shaping of a perfect alliance 
between a man and a woman must always go 
much of suffering — for it is by suffering that 
the souls of human beings are brought into form 
and carved to fitness for each other. 

Is it seriously — when one comes to think of 
it — possible to imagine love without pain? 
Figure to yourself, O man, a courtship absolutely 
undenied, from the first accepted, even en- 
couraged, with complaisantly unresisting bride, 
smiling parents, fair-weather prospects, and cash 
unlimited! How awfully dull! Does not the 
stoutest heart quail at the suggestion? Or if 
such a mating might be deemed pleasant as far 
as its accessories and conditions were concerned, 
could it yet be termed Love? 

For Love, if worth anything, seems to demand 
pain and strain in order to prove itself, and 
is not satisfied with an easy attainment. How 
indeed should one know the great heights except 
by the rocks and escarpments? And pain often 
in some strange way seems to be the measure 
of love — the measure by which we are assured 
that love is true and real; and so (which is 



LOVE AS AN ART 43 

one of the mysteries) it becomes transformed 
into a great joy. Yes, if men could only un- 
derstand, here is one of the most precious of 
the mysteries, and the solving of a great 
riddle. 

But that the course of true love does gener- 
ally not run smooth is understood, more or less, 
by every one. And it is woman's strange and 
imperious instinct — even though at considerable 
suffering to herself — to see that it doesn't run 
smooth. Ellis practically bases * the whole of 
the evolution of modesty on this instinct — reach- 
ing far down in the animal kingdom — by which 
the female constantly throws difficulties and 
obstacles in the way of courtship (by her coy- 
nesses, contrarieties, changeable moods, and so 
forth) ; thus calling out in the male all his 
ingenuity, his impetuosity, his energy, in over- 
coming them; rousing dormant elements of his 
nature; delaying consummation and giving time 
for his character and all his qualities to con- 
centrate; and indirectly having a like effect 
upon herself. So that ultimately by this method 
a maximum of passion and agitation is produced, 
and in the case of the human being love pene- 
trates to the very deeps and hidden caverns of 
the soul. Such is the genesis of Modesty — not 
by any means Nature's denial of love, but rather 
the crafty old dame's method of rendering love, 
by temporary obstacles, all the more insurgent 
and irresistible — her method of making it less 
1 Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. i. 



44 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

superficial, of deepening the channels and render- 
ing them more profound. 

Practically, and as a matter of policy, a too 
easy consent to another's love is a mistake. The 
barb only sticks when the bait is withdrawn. 
Ovid, it will be remembered, advises that "the 
lover should be admitted by the window, even 
when the door is quite accessible, and really 
more convenient"; 1 and most girls (though they 
have not read Ovid) know instinctively that 
this is the right policy! Nothing is so hateful to 
a real lover as an easy, accommodating, altruistic 
affection — thoroughly Christian in sentiment, and 
with no more shape of its own than a pillow! 
Romance flies at the mere mention of Christian 
altruism; and the essence of love is romance. 

Hence not only technical obstacles, but essential 
differences are necessary to the growth of the 
passion. Differences of age, differences of sex, 
differences of class, temperament, hereditary 
strain, learning, accomplishment, and so forth — 
if not too great — are all necessary and valuable. 
They all mean romance, and contribute to that 
exchange of essences which we saw was the 
primitive protozoic law. It is quite probable 
that the abiding romance between the sexes — 
so much greater as a rule than that between 
two of like sex — is due to the fact that the 
man and the woman never really understand 
each other; each to the other is a figure in 
cloudland, sometimes truly divine, sometimes 
1 Ars. Am. iii. 605. 



LOVE AS AN ART 45 

alas I quite the reverse; but never clear and 
obvious in outline, as a simple mortal may be 
expected to be. 

But to return to the subject of pain and suffer- 
ing. There is something more in their work 
than merely to reveal to the lover the extent 
or the depth of his own love. They have some- 
thing surely to do with the inner realities of the 
affair, with the moulding or hammering or weld- 
ing process whereby union is effected and, in some 
sense, a new being created. It seems as if when 
two naked souls approach, or come anywhere 
near contact with each other, the one inevitably 
burns or scorches the other. The intense chem- 
istry of the psychic elements produces some- 
thing like an actual flame. A fresh combination 
is entered into, profound transformations are 
effected, strange forces liberated, and a new per- 
sonality perhaps created; and the accomplishment 
and evidence of the whole process is by no 
means only joy, but agony also, even as child- 
birth is. 

All one can reasonably do is to endure. It 
is no good making a fuss. In affairs of the 
heart what we call suffering corresponds to what 
we call labor or effort in affairs of the body. 
When you put your shoulder to the cart-wheel 
you feel the pain and pressure of the effort, 
but that assures you that you are exercising a 
force, that something is being done; so suffering 
of the heart assures you that something is being 
done in that other and less tangible world. To 



46 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

scold and scowl and blame your loved one is 
the stupidest thing you can do. And worse 
than stupid, it is useless. For it can only alien- 
ate. Probably that other one is suffering as 
well as you — possibly more' than you, possibly 
a good deal less. What does it matter? The 
suffering is there and must be borne; the work, 
whatever it is, is being done; the transformation 
is being effected. Do you want your beloved to 
suffer instead of you, or simply because you are 
suffering? Or is it Pity you desire rather than 
Love. 

On the other hand, these things borne in silence 
have, I believe, an extraordinary effect. They 
pull people to you by quite invisible cords. As 
I have said, the fact of heart-strain and tension 
shows that there is a pressure or pull being ex- 
erted somewhere. Though the cord be invisible, 
there is someone at the other end (though not per- 
haps quite the one you supposed) who responds. 

Words anyhow, in matters of love, are rather 
foolish; they are worse than foolish, they are 
useless; and again they are worse than useless, 
for they are misleading. Love is an art. "It 
must be revealed by acts," says a Swiss writer, 
"and not betrayed by words." And Havelock 
Ellis, speaking further of the mistake of relying 
on declarations and asservations, says: 1 "This 
is scarcely realized by those ill-advised lovers who 
consider that the first step in courtship — and 
perhaps even the whole of courtship — is for a 

1 Psychology of Sex, vol. vi. p. 542. 



LOVE AS AN ART 47 

man to ask a woman to be his wife. That is so 
far from being the case that it constantly happens 
that the premature exhibition of so large a de- 
mand at once and forever damns all the wooer's 
chances." And in another passage he says: 1 
"Love's requests cannot be made in words, nor 
truthfully answered in words : a fine divination 
is still needed as long as love lasts." 

Love is an art. As no mere talk can convey 
the meaning of a piece of music or a beautiful 
poem, so no verbal declaration can come any- 
where near expressing what the lover wants to 
say. And for one very good and sufficient reason 
(among others) — namely, that he does not know 
himself! Under these circumstances to say any- 
thing is almost certainly to say something mislead- 
ing or false. And the decent lover knows this and 
holds his tongue. To talk about your devotion 
is to kill it — moreover, it is to render it banal and 
suspect in the eyes of your beloved. 

Nevertheless though he cannot describe or ex- 
plain what he wants to say, the lover can feel it 
— is feeling it all the time; and this feeling, like 
other feelings, he can express by indirections — 
by symbols, by actions, by the alphabet of deed 
and gesture, and all the hieroglyphics of Life and 
Art. Like the animals and the angels and all 
the blessed creatures who don't talk, he can com- 
municate in the ancient, primeval, universal 
language of all creation, in the language which 
is itself creation. 

x Ibid., p. 544. 



CHAPTER IV 

ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS 

"To talk about your devotion is to kill it." Per- 
haps one ought even to say that to talk at all is 
to kill it! One often thinks what divine and 
beautiful creatures — men and women — there are 
all around, how loving and lovable, how gracious 
in their charm, how grand in their destiny! — 
if indeed they could only be persuaded to remain 
within that magic circle of silence. And then 
alas ! one of these divinities begins to talk — and 
it is like the fair woman in the fable, out of 
whose mouth, whenever she opened it, there 
jumped a mouse! The shock is almost more 
than one can bear. Not that the shock proceeds 
from the ignorance displayed — for the animals 
and even the angels are deliciously ignorant — 
but from the revelations which speech uncon- 
sciously makes of certain states of the soul — from 
the strange falsity which is too often heard in the 
words, and in the very tones of the voice. 

But Love burns this falsity away. That is 
why love — even rude and rampant and out- 
rageous love — does more for the moralizing of 
poor humanity than a hundred thousand Sunday 
schools. It cleans the little human soul from 

4 8 



ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS 49 

the clustered lies in which it has nested itself — 
from the petty conceits and deceits and cowardices 
and covert meannesses — and all the things that 
fly from the tip of the tongue directly the mouth 
opens. It burns and cleans them away, and 
leaves the lover speechless — but approximately 
honest ! 

Love is an art, and the greatest of the Arts — 
and the truth of it cannot be said in words; that 
is, in any direct use of words. You may write 
a sonnet, of course, to your mistress's eyebrow; 
but that is work, that is doing something; it is 
or is trying to be, a work of Art — and anyhow 
your mistress is not obliged to read it! Or 
you may take a more decisive line to express 
your feelings — by slaying your rival, for instance, 
with a sword. That is allowable. But to bore 
the lady with protestations, and to demand 
definite replies (that is, to tell lies yourself, and 
to compel her to tell lies), is both foolish and 
wicked. 

The expression of Love is a great art, and it 
needs man's highest ingenuity and capacity to 
become skilled in it — but in the public mind it is 
an art utterly neglected and despised, and it is 
only by a very few (and those not always the 
most 'respectable') that it is really cultivated. 
It is a great art, for the same reason that the 
expression of Beauty is a great art — for the 
reason that Love itself (like Beauty) belongs 
to another plane of existence than the plane of 
ordinary life and speech. 



SO THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

Speech is man's great prerogative, which dif- 
ferentiates him from the other creatures, and of 
which he is, especially during the Civilization 
period, so proud. The animals do not use it, 
because they have not arrived at the need of 
it; the angels do not use it, because they have 
passed beyond the need. It belongs to the 
second stage of human consciousness, that which 
is founded on self-consciousness — on the rooted 
consciousness of the self as something solitary, 
apart from others, even antagonistic to them, 
the centre (strange contradiction in terms!) even 
among millions of other centres, to which every- 
thing has to be referred. The whole of ordinary 
speech proceeds, and has proceeded, from this 
kind of self-consciousness — is generated from 
it, describes it, analyzes it, pictures it forth and 
expresses it — and in the upshot is just as muddled 
and illusive and unsatisfactory as the thing it 
proceeds from. And Love, which is not founded 
on that kind of self-consciousness — which is 
in fact the denial of self-centration — has no 
use for it. Love can only say what it wants 
by the language of life, action, song, sacrifice, 
ravishment, death, and the great panorama of 
creation. 

Self-consciousness is fatal to love. The self- 
conscious lover never 'arrives.' The woman 
looks at him — and then she looks at something 
more interesting. And so too the whole modern 
period of commercial civilization and Christianity 
has been fatal to love; for both these great 



ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS 5 1 

movements have concentrated the thoughts of 
men on their own individual salvation — Chris- 
tianity on the salvation of their souls, and com- 
mercialism on the salvation of their money-bags. 
They have bred the self-regarding consciousness 
in the highest degree; and so — though they 
may have had their uses and their parts to play 
in the history of mankind, they have been fatal 
to the communal spirit in society, and they have 
been fatal to the glad expression of the soul in 
private life. 

Self-consciousness is fatal to love, which is the 
true expression of the soul. And it is curious 
how (for some occult reason) the whole treat- 
ment of the subject in our modern world drives it 
along this painful mirror-lined ravine — how the 
child is brought up in ignorance and darkness, 
amid averted faces and frowns, and always the 
thought of self and its own wickedness is thrust 
upon it, and never the good and the beauty of 
the loved one; how the same attitude continues 
into years of maturity; how somehow self- 
forgetting heroisms for the sake of love are made 
difficult in modern life; how even the act of inter- 
course itself, instead of taking place in the open 
air — in touch with the great and abounding life 
of Nature — is generally consummated in closed 
and stuffy rooms, the symbols of mental dark- 
ness and morbidity, and the breeding-ground of 
the pettier elements of human nature. 1 

1 "The disgrace which has overtaken the sexual act, and 
rendered it a deed of darkness, is doubtless largely responsible 



52 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

We have said that for any lasting alliance, or 
really big and satisfactory love-affair, plenty of 
time should be given. Perhaps it is a good rule 
(if any rule in such matters can be good) never to 
act until one is practically compelled by one's 
feelings to do so. At any rate, the opposite 
policy — that of letting off steam, or giving 
expression to one's sentiments, at the slightest 
pressure — is an obvious mistake. It gives no 
chance for the depths to be stirred, or the big 
forces to come into play. Some degree, too, 
of self-repression and holding back on the part 
of the man gives time, as we have said, for the 
woman's love-feelings to unfold and define them- 
selves. But there is a limit here, and even 
sympathy and consideration are not always in 
place with love. There is something bigger — 
titanic, elemental — which must also have its 
way. And, after all, Force (if only appropriately 
used) is the greatest of compliments. I think 
every woman, in her heart of hearts, wishes to be 
ravished; but naturally it must be by the right 
man. This is the compliment which is the most 
grateful of all to receive, because it is most 
sincere; and this is the compliment which is the 
most difficult of all to pay — because nothing but 

for the fact that the chief time for its consummation among 
modern civilized peoples is the darkness of the early night in 
stuffy bedrooms when the fatigue of the day's labors is 
struggling with the artificial stimulation produced by heavy 
meals and alcoholic drinks. This habit is partly responsible 
for the indifference or even disgust with which women some- 
times view coitus" (H. Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of 
Sex, vol. vi. p. 558), 



ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS 53 

the finest instinct can decide when it is appropri- 
ate; and if by chance it is inappropriate the cause 
is ipso facto ruined. 

Nature prizes strength and power; and so 
likewise does love, which moves in the heart of 
Nature and shares her secrets. To regard Love 
as a kind of refined and delicate altruism is, as we 
have already hinted, drivelling nonsense. To the 
lover in general violence is more endurable than 
indifference; and many lovers are of such tem- 
perament that blows and kicks (actual or meta- 
phorical) stimulate and increase their ardor. 
Even Ovid — who must have been something of a 
gay dog in his day — says, "wow nisi lasus amo" 
There is a feeling that at all costs one must come 
to close quarters with the beloved — if not in the 
mimic battles of sex, then in quite serious and 
hostile encounters. To reach the other one 
somehow, to leave one's mark, one's impress on 
the beloved — or vice versa to be reached and to 
feel the impress — is a necessity. I sometimes 
think that this is the explanation of those strange 
cases in which a man, mad with love, and unable 
to satisfy his passion, kills the girl he loves. I 
don't think it is hypothetical jealousy of a 
possible other lover. I think it is something 
much more direct than that — the blind urge to 
reach her very actual self, even if it be only with 
knife or bullet. I am sure that this is the 
explanation of those many cases of unhappily 
married folk who everlastingly nag at each other, 
and yet will not on any account part company. 



54 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

They cannot love each other properly, and yet 
they cannot leave each other alone. A strange 
madness urges them into continual contact and 
collision. 

But yet possibly there is even something more 
in the whole thing, on and beyond what is here 
indicated. In the extraordinary and often 
agonizing experiences attending the matter of 
'falling in love,' great changes, as we have al- 
ready suggested, are being wrought in the human 
being. Astounding inner convulsions and con- 
versions take place — rejections of old habits, 
adoptions of new ones. The presence of the be- 
loved exercises this magical selective and recon- 
structive influence — and that independently to a 
large degree of whether the relation is a happy 
and 'successful' one, or whether it is contrary and 
unsuccessful. The main thing is contact, and the 
coming of one person into touch with the other. 

We have seen, in the case of the Protozoa, the 
amazing fact of the 'maturation-divisions' and 
the 'extrusion of polar bodies' as a preparation 
for conjugation — how, when the two cells which 
are about to unite approach each other, changes 
take place already before they come into contact, 
and half the chromatin elements from one cell 
are expelled, and half the chromatin elements 
also from the other. What the exact nature of 
this division and extrusion may be is a thing not 
yet known, but there seems every reason to be- 
lieve that it is of such a character as to leave the 
residual elements on both sides complementary to 



ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS $$ 

one another — so that when united they shall re- 
store the total attributes of the race-life, only 
perhaps in a new and unprecedented combination. 
The Protozoa in fact 'prepare' themselves for 
conjugation and realization of the race-life, by 
casting out certain elements which would interfere 
with this realization. And we may well ask our- 
selves whether in the case of Man the convulsions 
and conversions of which we have spoken have 
not the same purpose and result, or something 
much resembling it. Whatever really takes place 
in the unseen world in the case of human Love, 
we cannot but be persuaded that it is something 
of very far-reaching and long-lasting import; and 
to find that the process should often involve great 
pain to the little mortals concerned seems readily 
conceivable and by no means unnatural. 

The complementary nature of love is a thing 
which has often been pointed out — how the dark 
marries the fair, the tall the short, the active the 
lethargic, and so forth. Schopenhauer, in his 
Welt ah Wille und Vorstellung, has made a spe- 
cial study of this subject. Plato, Darwin, and 
others have alluded to it. It seems as if, in Love, 
the creature — to use Dante Rossetti's expression 
— feels a "poignant thirst and exquisite hunger" 
for that other one who will supply the elements 
wanting in himself, who will restore the balance, 
and fill up the round of the race ideal. And as 
every one of us is eccentric and out of balance 
and perfection on one side or another, so it almost 
seems as if for every one there must be, on the 



$6 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

other side, a complementary character to be found 
— who needs something at any rate of what we can 
supply. And this consideration may yield us the 
motto — however painfully conscious we may be 
of our own weaknesses and deficiencies and follies 
and vices and general ungainliness — the motto of 
"Never despair!" Innocent folk, whose studies 
of this subject have been chiefly perhaps derived 
from penny novelettes — are sometimes inclined 
to think that love is a stereotyped affair occurring 
in a certain pattern and under certain conditions 
between the ages of 18 and 35; and that if you 
are not between these ages and are not fortunate 
enough to have a good complexion and a nicely 
formed aquiline nose, you may as well abandon 
hope ! They suppose that there is a certain thing 
called a Man, and another certain thing called a 
Woman, and that the combination of these two 
forms a third quite stereotyped thing called Mar- 
riage, and there is an end of it. 

But by some kind of Providential arrangement 
it appears that the actual facts are very different 
— that there are really hundreds of thousands of 
different kinds of men, and hundreds of thousands 
of different kinds of women, and consequently 
thousands of millions of different kinds of mar- 
riage; that there are no limits of grace or comeli- 
ness, or of character and accomplishment, or even 
of infirmity or age, within which love is obliged 
to move; and that there is no defect, of body or 
mind, which is of necessity a bar — which may 
not even (to some special other person) become 



ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS 57 

an object of attraction. Thus it is that the ugly 
and deformed have no great difficulty in finding 
their mates — as a visit to the seaside on a bank- 
holiday speedily convinces us; a squint may be a 
positive attraction to some, as it is said to have 
been to the philosopher Descartes, and marks 
of smallpox indispensable to others ; 1 while I 
have read of a case somewhere, where the man 
was immediately stirred to romance by the sight 
of a wooden leg in a woman ! 2 

But apart from these extreme instances which 
may be due to special causes, the general prin- 
ciple of compensation through opposites is very 
obvious and marked. The fluffy and absurd 
little woman is selected by a tall and statuesque 
grenadier; the tall and statuesque lady is made 
love to by a man who has to stand on a chair to 
kiss her; the society elegant takes to a snuffy 
and preposterous professor; the bookish scholar 
(as in Jude the Obscure) to a mere whore; the 
clever beauty (as in L'homme qui rit) to a grin- 
ning clown; and of course the 'wicked' man is al- 
ways saved by the saintly woman. The masculine, 
virago-like woman, on the other hand, finds a 
man who positively likes being beaten with a 
stick; and the miaowling, aimlessly amiable fe- 
male gets a bully for a husband (and one can only 
say, "Serve them both right") . . . Finally, the 
well-formed aquiline nose insists on marrying a 

1 See H. Ellis, vol. v. pp. 11 and 12. 

2 See also Kraft-Ebing, Psychopathies sexualis, 7th edition, 
p. 165. 



58 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

pug nose — and this apparently quite regardless 
of what the other bodily and mental parts may 
be, or what they may want. 

Everyone knows cases of quite young men 
who only love women of really advanced age, 
beyond the limit of childbirth; and these are 
curious because they seem to point to impelling 
forces in love beyond and independent of genera- 
tion and race-perpetuation, and therefore lying 
outside of the Schopenhauerian explanations. 
And similarly we all know cases of young girls 
who are deadly earnest in their affection for quite 
old men, men who might well be their fathers 
or grandfathers, but hardly, one would think, 
their husbands. In these cases it looks as if the 
young thing needs and seeks a parent as well 
as a lover — the two in one, combined. And 
where such love is returned, it is returned in 
a kind of protective love, rather than an amative 
love — or at any rate as a love in which the 
protective and amative characters are closely 
united. 

Similarly there are numbers of cases in which 
mature or quite grown men and women only love 
(passionately and devotedly) boys and girls of 
immature age — their love for them ceasing from 
its ardor and intensity when the objects of devo- 
tion reach the age, say, of twenty or twenty-one. 
And in many of these cases the love is ardently 
returned. Here, again, it is evidently not a case 
of generation or race-perpetuation, but simply of 
compensation — the young thing requiring the 



ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS 59 

help and protection of the older, and the older 
requiring an outlet for the protective instinct — a 
case of exchange of essences and qualities which 
(if at all decently and sensibly managed) might 
well go to the building up of a full and well- 
rounded life on either side. 

In all these cases (and the above are of course 
only samples out of thousands) we seem to see 
an effort of the race-life to restore its total 
quality — to restore it through the operation of 
love — either by completing and rounding out the 
life of the individuals concerned, or by uniting 
some of their characteristics in the progeny. I 
say 'seem to see,' because we cannot well suppose 
that this gives a complete account of the matter, 
or that it explains the whole meaning of Love; 
but it at any rate suggests an important aspect of 
the question. The full quality of the race-life is 
always building itself up and restoring itself in 
this manner. A process of Regeneration is al- 
ways going on. And this process, as suggested 
before, is more fundamental even than Genera- 
tion — or it is a process of which Generation is 
only one department. 

Regeneration is the key to the meaning of 
love — to be in the first place born again in some 
one else or through some one else; in the second 
place only, to be born again through a child. As 
in the Protozoa, so among human beings, genera- 
tion alone can hardly be looked upon as the 
primary object of conjugation; for, among the 
latter, out of myriads of unions vast numbers 



60 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

are as a matter of fact infertile, and a consider- 
able percentage (as indicated above) are quite 
necessarily infertile, and yet these infertile unions 
are quite as close, and the love concerned in them 
quite as intense and penetrating, as in the case 
of the fertile ones. "If a girl were free to choose 
according to her inclinations," says Florence Farr 
in an eloquent plea for the economic independ- 
ence of women, 1 "there is practically no doubt 
that she would choose the right father for her 
child, however badly she might choose a life-long 
companion for herself." In this passage the 
authoress seems to suggest (perhaps following 
Schopenhauer) that the generation of a perfect 
child is the one main even though unconscious 
purpose of love-union, and that the individual 
parent-lives may instinctively be sacrificed for 
this object. And there no doubt is so far truth 
in this, that the tremendous forces of love often 
pay little respect to the world conveniences and 
compatibilities of the lovers themselves, and that 
often (as indeed also among the Protozoa) the 
parent's life is rudely and ruthlessly sacrificed for 
the birth of the next generation. Still, even so, 
I think the statement as put here is risky, both 
as a matter of fact and as a matter of theory. 
Would it not be more correct or less risky to 
say: "If a girl were free to choose, she would 
choose the man who most completely compensated 
and rounded out her own qualities, physical and 
mental (and so would be likely to get her a fine 

1 Modern Woman: Her Intentions, p. 30. 



ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS 6 1 

babe), even though he might not prove the best 
of companions?" 

It is curious, as we have suggested before, how 
married folk often quarrel to desperation on the 
surface, and yet seem to have a deep and per- 
manent hold on each other — returning together 
again even after separation. It seems in these 
cases as if they mutually obtained a stimulus 
from each other, even by their strife, which they 
could not get elsewhere. Ira amantium red- 
integratio amoris. The idea, too, that the great 
and primal object of union is to be sought in 
the next generation has something unsatisfactory 
about it. Why not in this generation? Why 
should the blessedness of mankind always be 
deferred to posterity? It is not merely, I take 
it, the perpetuation of the race which is the pur- 
pose of love, but the perfection of the race, the 
completeness and adequacy of its self-expression, 
which love may make possible to-day just as well 
as to-morrow. Ellen Key, in that fine book, 
Liebe und Ehe, 1 expresses this well when she 
says: "Love seeks union, not only in connection 
with the creation of a new being, but also because 
two beings through one another may become a 
new being, and a greater than either could be of 
itself alone." 

The complementary nature of sex-attraction 
was made much of by that youthful genius Otto 
Weininger, who in his book, Sex and Character, 2 

1 English edition; Heinemann, 1906. 

2 Fischer, Berlin, p. 192. 



62 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

has a chapter on the laws of Sexual Attractions 
in which, in the true German manner, he not 
only gives an algebraic formula for the different 
types of men and women, but a formula also 
for the force of attraction between any two 
given individuals — which latter of course becomes 
infinite when the two individuals are exactly 
complementary to each other! Dr. Magnus 
Hirschfeld, in his very interesting work, Die 
Transvestiten, 1 goes even more into detail than 
does Weininger on the subject of the variations 
of human type in special regard to sex-charac- 
teristics. Sex-characteristics, he explains, may 
be divided into four groups, of which two . are 
physiological, namely the primary characteristics 
(the sex organs and adjuncts) and the secondary 
(the hair, the voice, the breasts, and so forth) ; 
and two are psychological or related (like love- 
sentiment, mental habit, dress, and so forth). 
Each of the four groups includes about four 
different elements; so that altogether he tabu- 
lates sixteen elements in the human being — each 
of which may vary independently of the other 
fifteen, and take on at least three possible forms, 
either distinctly masculine, distinctly feminine, 
or intermediate. Calculating up the number of 
different types which these variations would thus 
give rise to, he arrives at the figure 43,046,721 ! 
— which figure, I think we may say, we need 
not analyze further, since it is certainly quite 
large enough for all practical purposes ! And 
Berlin, 1910, p. 290. 



ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS 63 

really though we may mock a little at these 
fanciful divisions and dissections of human na- 
ture, they do help us to realize the enormous, the 
astounding number of varieties of which it is 
susceptible. And if again we consider that among 
the supposed forty-three millions each variety 
would have its counter type or complementary in- 
dividual, then we realize the enormous number 
of perfect unions which would be theoretically 
possible, and the enormous number of distinct and 
different ways in which the race-life could thus 
find adequate and admirable expression for itself. 
However, we are here getting into a somewhat 
abstract region. To return to the practical, the 
complementary idea certainly seems to account 
for much of human union; for though there are 
but few cases in which the qualities of the 
uniting parties are really quite complementary 
to each other, yet it is obvious that each person 
tends to seek and admire attributes in the other 
which he himself possesses only in small degree. 
At the same time, it must not be forgotten 
that some common qualities and common ground 
are necessary as a basis for affection, and that 
sympathy and agreement in like interests and 
habits are at least as powerful a bond as admira- 
tion of opposites. It sometimes happens that 
there are immense romances between people of 
quite different classes and habits of life, or of 
quite different race and color; and they see, 
for the moment, flaming ideals and wonder- 
worlds in each other. But unions in such cases 



64 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

are doubtful and dangerous, because so often 
t 3 common ground of sympathy and mutual 
understanding will be too limited; and hereditary 
instincts and influences, deep-lying and deep- 
working, will call the wanderers away, even from 
tl e star which they seek to follow. 

Sympathy with and understanding of the per- 
son one lives with must be cultivated to the last 
degree possible, because it is a condition of any 
real and permanent alliance. And it may even 
go so far (and should go so far) as a frank 
understanding and tolerance of such person's 
other loves. After all, it seldom happens, with 
any one who has more than one or two great in- 
terests in life, that he finds a mate who can sym- 
pathize with or understand them all. In that case 
a certain portion of his personality is left out 
in the cold, as it were; and if this is an impor- 
tant portion it seems perfectly natural for him 
to seek for a mate or a lover on that side too. 
Two such loves are often perfectly compatible 
and reconcilable — though naturally one will be 
the dominant love, and the other subsidiary, and 
if such secondary loves are good-humoredly tol- 
erated and admitted, the effect will generally be 
to confirm the first and original alliance all the 
more. 

All this, however, does not mean that a man 
can well be 'in love' with two women, for in- 
stance, at the same time. To love is a very 
different thing from being 'in love' ; and the lat- 
ter indicates a torrent-rush of feeling which 



ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS 65 

necessarily can only move towards one person at a 
time. (A standing flood of water may embrace 
and surround several islands, but it cannot very 
well flow in more than one direction at once.) 
But this torrent-rush does not last forever, and in 
due time it subsides into the quiescent and lake- 
like stage — unless indeed it runs itself out and 
disappears altogether. 

Against this running out and disappearance it 
is part of the Art of Love to be able to guard. 
It has sometimes been argued that familiarity is 
of necessity fatal; and that it is useless to con- 
tend against this sinister tendency implanted in 
the very nature of love itself. But this conten- 
tion contains only a very partial truth. It is 
true that in physical love there is a certain 
physical polarity which, like electric polarity, 
tends to equate itself by contact. The exchange 
of essences — which we saw as a chief phenome- 
non of conjugation, from the protozoa upwards 
— completes itself in any given case after a given 
time; and after that becomes comparatively quies- 
cent. The same with the exchange of mental 
essences. Two people, after years, cease to ex- 
change their views and opinions with the same 
vitality as at first; they lose their snap and crackle 
with regard to each other — and naturally, be- 
cause they now know each other's minds per- 
fectly, and have perhaps modified them mutually 
to the point of likeness. But this only means, 
or should mean in a healthy case, that their in- 
terest in each other has passed into another plane, 



66 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

that the venue of Love has been removed to 
another court. If something has been lost in 
respect of the physical rush and torrent, and 
something in respect of the mental breeze and 
sparkle, great things have been gained in the ever- 
widening assurance and confidence of spiritual 
unity, and a kind of lake-like calm which indeed 
reflects the heavens. And under all, still in the 
depths, one may be conscious of a subtle flow 
and interchange, yet going on between the two 
personalities and relating itself to some deep 
and unseen movements far down in the heart of 
Nature. 

Of course for this continuance and permanence 
of love there must be a certain amount of con- 
tinence, not only physical, but on the emotional 
plane as well. Anything like nausea, created by 
excess on either of these planes, has to be 
avoided. New subjects of interest, and points 
of contact, must be sought; temporary absences 
rather encouraged than deprecated; and lesser 
loves, as we have already hinted, not turned into 
gages of battle. Few things, in fact, endear one 
to a partner so much as the sense that one can 
freely confide to him or her one's affaires de 
cceur; and when a man and wife have reached 
this point of confidence in their relation to each 
other, it may fairly then be said (however shock- 
ing this may sound to the orthodox) that their 
union is permanent and assured. 

Nothing can, in the longer enduring values of 
love, well take the place of some such chivalrous 



ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS 67 

mutual consideration which reaches the finest 
fibres of the heart, and offers a perfect freedom 
even there. Ellen Key — to quote her Ueber Liebe 
und Ehe 1 again — says, "Fidelity [in love] can 
never be promised, but may be won afresh every 
day;" and she continues, "It is sad that this 
truth — which was clear enough to the chivalrous 
sentiment of the old courts of Love — must still 
to-day be insisted on. One of the reasons, in 
fact, which these courts gave, why love was not 
compatible with Marriage, was 'that the wife 
could never expect from her husband the fine con- 
sideration that the Lover is bound to exhibit, be- 
cause the latter only receives as a favor what the 
husband takes as his right.' " To preserve love 
through years and years with this halo of ro- 
mance still about it, and this tenderness of devo- 
tion which means a daily renewed gift of free- 
dom, is indeed a great Art. It is a great and 
difficult Art, but one which is assuredly "worth 
while." 

The passion altogether, and in all its aspects, 
is a wonderful thing; and perhaps, as remarked 
before, the less said about it, the better! When 
people — I would say — come (not without clatter) 
and offer you their hearts, do not pay too much 
attention. What they offer may be genuine, or 
it may not — they themselves probably do not 
know. Nor do you also fall into a like mistake, 
offering something which you have not the power 

1 Berlin, 1905, p. 332. English translation, Love and Mar- 
riage; Putnam's, 1911. 



68 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

to give — or to withhold. Silence and Time alone 
avail. These things lie on the knees of the gods ; 
which place — though it may seem, as someone 
has said, 'rather cold and uncomfortable' — is per- 
haps the best place for them. 



CHAPTER V 

THE ART OF DYING 

We have suggested in the last paper that some 
day possibly we may arrive at an intelligent 
handling of love and its problems, by which at 
length the passion may cease to be the cause of 
endless shipwreck and despair to mortals, and 
become a favorable and friendly divinity obedient 
to our service. Somewhat thus has been man's 
experience with all the great powers of Nature — 
with fire and flood on the earth, with the winds 
and lightning of heaven. With intelligent treat- 
ment they have become his very ready helpers 
and allies. And, as indicated in the outset of 
this book, we may fairly expect the same con- 
clusion with regard to the great natural event 
and process termed Death. The time has come 
when we are really called upon to face up to 
the fact of our decease from the present con- 
ditions of life, physical and mental; when we are 
called upon to study and to understand this fact, 
and by understanding to become masters of the 
change which it represents — and able to convert 
it to our great use and advantage. 

Hitherto — as I shall have occasion presently 
to point out — there has been singularly little 

6 9 



70 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

study of this science, either from the clinical, the 
physiological, or the psychological points of view; 
and the art of dying, for example (which is the 
subject of this chapter), seems to have been en- 
tirely neglected. 

No doubt it may be said that this is a difficult 
art — difficult to study, and more difficult still to 
practise; yet, after all, that seems only the more 
reason for approaching it. The art of avoiding 
death commands much attention, and there are 
hundreds and thousands of books on that subject; 
yet since none can really avoid the experience and 
all must sooner or later pass through it, it might 
be thought that the art of meeting one's end 
with discretion and presence of mind would at 
least command as much attention. 

There ought, one would say — and considering 
the continual presence of this great ocean wait- 
ing to receive us — to be lessons on the subject of 
its navigation free of charge, and available for all 
who wish, just as there are lessons in swimming 
for sailors. And though it may be true that since, 
as a rule, one cannot die more than once, it is 
difficult to obtain the needed practice, yet even 
so one may with perseverance get some approach 
to doing so. There are a good many recorded 
cases of people who have apparently died, and 
after an interval of a few minutes or a few hours 
have come to life again. I knew a married 
lady, some years back, who after a long period 
of illness was given up by the doctors, and 
gradually sank till to all appearances she passed 



THE ART OF DYING 7 1 

away. The medical man pronounced life to be 
extinct, and the relatives began to make the 
usual arrangements for her funeral. However, 
being devoted to her children, and anxious to see 
them through a critical period, she had made up 
her mind not to die, and being a woman of strong 
will she clung to her resolution. Two or three 
hours elapsed, and then, to the surprise and joy 
of her friends she returned from 'the other side* 
— after which she lived three or four years, suffi- 
ciently long to carry out what was needed for 
her family. And though in this case she had no 
very distinct experience to report of another 
state of existence, yet the fact of her 'will to 
live' having persevered through the sleep or ap- 
parent death of her body and upper mind, was 
sufficient to convince her of survival of some sort 
on a deeper plane, and to disarm all fear and 
hesitation when death finally came. 

Probably, on the ordinary mental plane, death 
very much resembles sleep, and its actual arrival 
is almost imperceptible; but, in the deeper 
regions of the mind, there are not unfrequently 
signs or suggestions of a great awakening. An 
expression of ecstasy often overspreads the 
features; sometimes there are sudden apparent 
recognitions of friends who have already passed 
away; 1 in many cases there seems to be a great 
extension of memory and perception; and in not 

J See chapter on "Visions of the Dying" in Death: its 
Causes and Phenomena, by Carrington and Meader (1911); 
also infra, ch. vi. p. 103. 



72 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

a few a distinct sensation of flying or moving 
upwards. 1 To these and other similar considera- 
tions I shall return later. At present I would 
prefer to keep to the more physical aspects of 
the question; but even so far, one cannot help 
feeling that — whatever collateral drawbacks there 
may be in death — in the way of painful illness, 
parting with friends, disturbance and abandon- 
ment of plans, and so forth — the experience 
itself must be enormously interesting. Talk 
about starting on a journey; but what must the 
longest sea-voyage be, compared with this one, 
with its wonderful vista, and visions, and voices 
calling? And again, since it is an experience 
that all must go through, and that countless 
millons of our fellows have gone through and 
are still continually going through, for that very 
reason alone it has a fascination; and one feels 
that had one the opportunity to avoid it one 
would hardly wish to do so. 

As I have said, it is curious that there is next to 
no instruction or guidance commonly provided or 
accessible in this matter. I mean especially on 
the physical side. What are our medical folk 
doing? There are lots of books on childbirth 
and the science of parturition, and the best 
methods of making the transition easy; but 
when it comes to the end of life and the event 
corresponding and complementary to birth, there 
is little except silence and dismay. 

1 See H. Pieron, "Contribution a la Psychologie des Mour- 
ants," in Revue Philosophique, Dec, 1902. 



THE ART OF DYING 73 

The usual course of preparation for this most 
important event seems to be (barring accidents) 
something as follows : — a physically unhealthy 
and morally stupid life, which inevitably leads to 
degenerative tendencies and ultimately to distinct 
disease; then one or two breakdowns, which lead 
to panic, and the summoning of doctors; then 
partial recovery, and a repetition da capo of the 
whole series, without any of the least improve- 
ment in the general style of life; then of course 
worse breakdown and panic, leading at last to 
violent drugs, injections, operations, and so forth, 
in the hope of prolonging existence a few hours; 
and finally death arriving, not graciously, but in 
the sense of a dismal defeat and rout to every- 
body concerned; and to the patient a hurried, 
confused and embittered end, robbed of all de- 
cency and dignity. 

Now this won't do ! When one thinks of the 
deaths of animals — so composed on the whole — 
the calm, the quietude, the dignity even, and the 
absence as a rule of very acute or obvious suffer- 
ing; or when one thinks of the very similar con- 
ditions of death among many savage peoples; one 
cannot but ask, Why this difference? One cannot 
but say, It really will not do for us 'the heirs of 
all the ages' to go on behaving in this feeble and 
foolish way — leading lives which utterly unfit us 
for the inevitable end of life, and stricken with 
most incompetent panic and dismay when the very 
thing arrives which we have foreseen and which 
we have had such ample time to prepare for. 



74 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

Death — from whatever point of view we look 
at it — seems to be a break-up of the unity of the 
creature. 1 It is a dislocation and to some degree 
a rending asunder. But such dislocation and 
break-up may be of a healthy and normal type, 
or it may be unhealthy and of the nature of 
disease. In the first case it may chiefly consist 
in the getting rid or shedding off of an out-worn 
husk, which is simply left behind — much in the 
same way as the chrysalis sheath of a moth or 
other insect is left behind, or as the husks of a 
growing bud or bulb are peeled off. Many an 
old person seems to die in this way — the body 
being the scene of little or no disturbance or 
conflict, but simply withering up, while often at 
the same time the spiritual nature of the man 
becomes strangely luminous and penetrating. 
Here there is a certain dislocation, but no pain- 
ful rending asunder. The centre of life seems 
merely to retire to a more inward and subtle 
region, where it perchance nourishes an even 
brighter flame than before; and the outer body is 
peeled off as a sort of outworn shell. But in 
other cases death is undoubtedly very different. 
Instead of the one centre simply withdrawing 
inward in the way indicated, while at the same 
time preserving almost to the last a general 
unity of the creature, rebellious and insubordi- 
nate centres spring up and introduce serious 
conflict into the organism. These are of course 

1 See Civilization: its Cause and Cure (George Allen, 
2s. 6d.), pp. 11-21. 



THE ART OF DYING 75 

diseases, or centres of disease — either in the body, 
like tumors, alien growths, nests of microbes, 
and so forth; or in the mind, like violent 
passions, greeds, anxieties, fears, rigid habits. 
And forming thus independent centres they tear 
and rend the body and mind between them till at 
last death supervenes — not at all on account of 
the voluntary withdrawal of the inner person to 
more ethereal regions, but simply through the 
destruction of the organism in which that person 
functions. 

It is evident (whatever view one may take of 
that inner person and its perduration into other 
regions of existence) that the former mode of 
death is the more normal, natural and desirable 
of the two, and the one which we should en- 
courage and cultivate; and that the latter is 
likely to be painful, undignified, and even re- 
pulsive. 

From this point of view, to strengthen the 
organizing, regulating power of the body, as 
against local growths and insurgencies, seems (in 
general terms) the best line to take — the best 
way of prolonging life, and of rendering death 
fairly easy and negotiable. The outlying centres 
— as represented by the various organs and 
faculties, both of the body and of the mind — 
have to be kept during life in subordination to 
the main centre, and as far as possible in decent 
harness and exercise, so as to become neither 
too slack on the one hand, nor too rowdy and 
insolent on the other. In this way, when the 



76 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

vital forces decay, these organs and faculties re- 
main still subservient to the central being, and 
becoming comparatively quiescent make room for 
its further passage and development. There are, 
indeed, some cases of death, in which the whole 
inner spirit and consciousness of the man seems 
to pass on unchanged, while the rabble rout of 
the body simply falls away, or is left behind, like 
a disused garment or husk as we have said. 

It should, however, be noted that the strength- 
ening of the organizing and regulating forces does 
not and must not mean the introduction of rigid 
and quasi-tyrannical habits (however 'good' 
such habits may be supposed to be). The in- 
terior Person — as we shall see later — is far too 
great and free to be adequately represented by 
any such habits or regulations, even the 'best,' 
and they really belong to the lower mind or body. 
Their dominance leads to an ossifying or wood- 
ening and valetudinarian tendency in the organ- 
ism, which is as bad in its way as the uncontrolled 
or inflammatory tendency. 

To avoid these opposite pitfalls, and to live 
sanely and sensibly, in a certain close touch with 
Nature and with the roots of human life, is no 
doubt difficult, especially under the ordinary 
conditions of civilization; yet it is surely well 
worth while — both for the sake of life itself and 
for the termination of it. And to keep a certain 
command of the situation during the mid-period 
of one's day is probably the best way toward 
commanding the situation at the end. But the 



THE ART OF DYING 77 

ordinary medical methods — with their drugs, 
their stimulants, their sleeping-draughts, their 
operations, their injections of morphia, serums, 
and so forth, are surely acting all the time in 
the opposite direction. Their tendency surely 
is to confuse and weaken the central agency, 
while at the same time they excite and some- 
times madden the local centres — till not unfre- 
quently the patient dies, confused, unconscious, 
wrecked, and a mass of disorders and corruption. 
The launching of a ship on the great ocean is a 
thing that is prepared for, even during all the 
period when the vessel is being built and per- 
fected. I am not a professional; but will no 
one write a manual on the subject, even from 
the medical and physiological point of view 
— How to prepare for death. . . . How to go 
through this great change with some degree of 
satisfaction, command, and intelligence? Above 
all, may we have a truce to the so common and 
unworthy conspiracies between doctors, nurses, 
and relatives, by which for the sake of keeping 
the patient a few hours (or at most a few days) 
longer alive, the unfortunate one — instead of 
being let alone and allowed to die peacefully as 
far as may be, and as indeed in nine cases out 
of ten he himself desires — is on the contrary tor- 
mented (defenceless as he is) with operations, 
inoculations and medical insults of all kinds up 
to the very last? The thing has become a 
positive scandal; and though the ignorant im- 
portunities of lay relatives may sometimes be 



78 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

deplorable, yet the prospect in one's last moments 
of falling into the hands of professionals is even 
worse, and adds a new terror to dissolution. It 
is at any rate a consolation to know that what- 
ever pains and torments of illness may have 
preceded, they generally pass away before the 
end; and notwithstanding such current expres- 
sions as 'death-agonies,' 'last struggle,' and 
so forth, the hour of death itself is mercifully 
calm and peaceful. Walt Whitman, who, in his 
hospital labors in the American Civil War, 
must have been present at a vast number of 
deathbeds, has recorded that in the great 
majority of cases the end comes quite simply, as 
an ordinary event of the day, "like having your 
breakfast." "Death is no more painful than 
birth," says Dr. Edward Clark in his book on 
Visions: a Study of False Sight; 1 and most 
doctors will agree to the general truth of this 
expression. 

There is a certain sacredness in Death, which 
should surely be respected. There is too, we 
may say, in most cases, a sure instinct which 
comes to the patient of what is impending and of 
what is needed; and every effort should be made 
to secure to the sufferer a quiet period during 
which he may effect the passage, for himself, dis- 
turbed as little as possible by the grief of friends 
or the interferences of attendants. 

*See Carrington and Header on Death: its Causes and 
Phenomena, p. 300. 



THE ART OF DYING 79 

II. PSYCHICAL 

We may now discuss the subject in hand some- 
what more from the psychical side. Not that in 
these matters the physical and the psychical can 
ever be completely dissociated, but that having 
in the preceding section leaned more to the physi- 
cal side it may be convenient now to lean rather 
to the psychical. 

And there is certainly an advantage here — 
namely, that from this side we may not unreason- 
ably say that the art of dying can be practised: 
it is really possible to approach or even perhaps 
to pass through Death on the mental plane, by 
voluntary effort. Most people regard the loss of 
ordinary consciousness (apart from sleep) with 
something like terror and horror. The best way 
to dispel that fear is to walk through the gate 
oneself every day — to divest oneself of that con- 
sciousness, and, mentally speaking, to die from 
time to time. Then one may get accustomed to 
it. 

Of all the hard facts of Science: as that fire 
will burn, that water will freeze, that the earth 
spins on its axis, and so forth, I know of none 
more solid and fundamental than the fact that if 
you inhibit thought (and persevere) you come 
at length to a region of consciousness below or 
behind thought, and different from ordinary 
thought in its nature and character — a conscious- 
ness of quasi-universal quality, and a realization 
of an altogether vaster self than that to which 



80 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

we are accustomed. And since the ordinary con- 
sciousness, with which we are concerned in ordi- 
nary life, is before all things founded on the little 
local self, and is in fact .^//-consciousness in the 
little local sense, it follows that to pass out of 
that is to die to the ordinary self and the ordinary 
world. 

It is to die in the ordinary sense, but in another 
sense it is to wake up and find that the 'I,' one's 
real, most intimate self, pervades the universe 
and all other beings — that the mountains and the 
sea and the stars are a part of one's body and that 
one's soul is in touch with the souls of all 
creatures. Yes, far closer than before. It is to 
be assured of an indestructible immortal life and 
of a joy immense and inexpressible — "to drink 
of the deep well of rest and joy, and sit with all 
the Gods in Paradise." 

So great, so splendid is this experience, that it 
may be said that all minor questions and doubts 
fall away in face of it; and certain it is that in 
thousands and thousands of cases the fact of its 
having come even once to a man has completely 
revolutionized his subsequent life and outlook on 
the world. 

Of exactly how this inhibition of Thought 
may be practised, and of all its collateral results 
and implications it would be out of place to speak 
now, 1 Sufficient at present to say that with the 

1 Reference may be made to the Upanishads ("Sacred books 
of the East," vols. i. and xv.) ; to the Bhagavat Gita; to R. M. 



THE ART OF DYING 8 1 

completion of this inhibition, and the realization 
of the consequent change of consciousness — even 
if it be only for a time — the ordinary mental self, 
with all its worries, cares, limitations, imperfec- 
tions, and so forth, falls completely off, and lies 
(for the time) like a thing dead; while the real 
man practically passes onward into another state 
of being. 

To experience all this with any degree of ful- 
ness, is to know that you have passed through 
Death; because whatever destruction physical 
death may bring to your local senses and faculties, 
you know that it will not affect that deeper Self. 
I mean that having already become aware of your 
real self as pervading the life of other creatures, 
and moving in other bodies than your so-called 
own, it clearly does not so very much matter 
whether the one body remains or passes. It may 
make a difference certainly, but not a fatal or in- 
superable difference. The vast ocean of the con- 
sciousness into which you have been admitted will 
not be profoundly affected, even by the abstraction 
of a pearl-shell from its shore. 

We have spoken of the Protozoa' more than 
once in these connections; and it has been said 
that the Protozoa have been considered immortal 
because, though they divide into separate cells 
or organisms, the life remains continuous; and 

Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness (Purdy Publishing Co., Chi- 
cago) ; to the Raja Yoga Lectures, by Vivekananda (New 
York, 1899); to the Ancient Wisdom, by Annie Besant; The 
Art of Creation, and A Visit to a Gnani, by E. Carpenter; 
and to many other works, of course. 



82 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

because though some of the descendant cells may 
die yet the life goes on — so that even in the 
hundredth generation the self or ego of a par- 
ticular cell may be identical with that of the first 
parent. And in the case we are considering we 
have something similar, for when the common 
life of souls is once recognized and experienced, 
it is clear that nothing can destroy it. It simply 
passes from one form to another. And we may 
perhaps say that as the Protozoa attain to a kind 
of immortality below death, or prior to its ap- 
pearance in the world, so the emancipated or 
freed soul attains to immortality above and be- 
yond death — passing over death, in fact, as a mere 
detail in its career. 

I say, this heart and kernel of a great and 
immortal self, this consciousness of a powerful 
and continuing life within, is there — however 
deeply it may be buried — within each person; 
and its discovery is open to everyone who will 
truly and persistently seek for it. And I say 
that I regard the discovery of this experience — ■ 
with its accompanying sense of rest, content, 
expansion, power, joy, and even omniscience and 
immensity — as the most fundamental and im- 
portant fact hitherto of human knowledge and 
scientific inquiry, and one verified and corrob- 
orated by thousands and even millions of human 
kind. Doubtless, as already suggested, questions 
may arise and will arise as to the exact nature 
of this continuing life, its exact relation to the 
local personal consciousness, as well as to what 



THE ART OF DYING 83 

is called the sublimal self — how far definite 
personality and memory go with it, and so forth. 
These questions we may return to later. At 
present let us simply rest on the experience itself. 
When Death is at hand, or its oncoming 
cannot long be delayed, there is still that to 
remember, to revert to, to cling to. And the 
more often we have made the experience our 
very own, in life, the easier will it be to hold 
on to at the close. Whatever physical death 
may bring — in the way of pain or distress or 
dislocation of faculty — there still remains that 
indefeasible fact, the certainty of the survival 
of the deepest, most universal portion of our 
natures. In some cases this deepest consciousness 
does itself remain so clear, so strong that — even 
through all the obscurations of illness and bodily 
weakness — death practically brings no break; 
the body is shed off, more or less like a husk 
or chrysalis (with effort and struggle perhaps, 
but without anguish and despair) ; and the human 
being passes on to realize under some other form 
the divine life which he has already partially 
entered into. I think it evident that this is 
the state of affairs which we ought to put before 
ourselves as the goal of our endeavor. It 
would seem the only condition which secures 
a sense of continuity in death, or which does 
not carry with it some threat of failure or ex- 
tinction. And it suggests to us that our per- 
sistent and unremitted effort during ordinary life 
should be to realize and lay hold of this immortal 



84 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

Thing, to conquer and make our own this very 
Heart of the universe. It suggests that every 
magnanimous deed, every self-forgetting enthu- 
siasm, every great and passionate love, every de- 
termined effort to get down into the heart and 
truth of things and below the conventional crust, 
does really bring us nearer to that attainment, and 
hasten the day when mankind at large shall in- 
deed finally obtain the victory; and the passage 
into and through death shall appear natural and 
simple and clear of obstruction, and even in its 
due time desirable. 

It is clear, however, that in a great number 
of cases this deepest consciousness, even if it 
has occasionally during life been reached by the 
person concerned, has not been sufficiently firmly 
established to endure through times of sickness, 
bodily weakness, and mental decay; while again, 
perhaps in the vast majority of cases, the previous 
realizations have been almost nil, or at most 
have been too few or too slight to count for 
much. What are we to say in such cases as 
these? Even if with the eye of faith or philoso- 
phy the bystander may seem to see the immortal 
spark shining, what consolation or assistance is 
that to the sufferer himself, who does not perceive 
or feel it? What is likely to be his experience of 
dissolution? and what may he fairly expect or 
look to as any sort of solution of the obscure 
problem? 

To get any kind of answer to these questions 
and any clear idea of what really happens in 



THE ART OF DYING 85 

the great majority of cases — when the break-up 
which we call dissolution arrives — it will be 
necessary to analyze roughly the nature of Man. 
We shall then see what are the various elements 
of that nature, and what their probable destina- 
tion, respectively. And for the purpose in hand 
I think we may divide the complete human 
being into four sections — though remembering of 
course that the classification proposed, or any such 
classification, can only be very rough and tenta- 
tive — namely, into ( 1 ) the eternal and immortal 
Self, of which we have already spoken; (2) the 
inner personal ego or human soul; (3) the outer 
personality or animal self; and (4) the actual 
body. Of these, (1), the eternal Self, is the 
germ or root of the whole human being; and I 
think we may even say that all the sections and 
elements of our human nature are really manifes- 
tations or outgrowths from this root (though of 
course in most cases unconscious of their real be- 
longing or their real source). Then (2), the 
inner personal self or human soul, includes the 
finer and subtler elements of 'character' — which 
we know so well in our friends, yet find so diffi- 
cult to describe, but which are roughly denoted 
by such words as affection, courage, wit, sympathy, 
love of beauty, sense of equality, freedom, self- 
reliance, determination, and so forth; while (3), 
the outer personality or animal soul (not at all 
of course to be despised) , is concerned with the 
more terrestrial desires and passions like pride, 
ambition, love of possession, jealousy, and espe- 



86 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

daily those that relate themselves directly to the 
body, e.g. desires of food, drink, sex, ease, sleep, 
and so forth; and finally, (4), the body, includes 
all the material organs and parts. Other and in- 
termediate subdivisions may be and sometimes are 
made, but these four will probably suffice for the 
present — remembering, as already said, that they 
have only a rough value : hard and fast lines and 
divisions in such matters being impossible, and the 
nature of man being really continuous and not 
built in sections; remembering, too, with regard 
to all four divisions, that the elements of them are 
not at all times present in consciousness, but to a 
large degree remain conscious or hidden or 
subliminal. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PASSAGE OF DEATH 

Allowing, then, that our human nature may 
be roughly divided as above into four main con- 
stituents, the destiny of two of these at death 
seems pretty clear. It is clear that ( i ) the central 
self remains (whether "we" know it or not) the 
same as it ever was, and ever will be, eternal, 
shining in glory and irradiating the world. It 
goes on, to be the birth-source, may be, of 
numberless lives to come. On the other hand, 
it is equally clear that (4) the actual visible 
tangible body dies, perishes, and is broken up. 
Though it may return, in its elements and through 
what we call Nature, into the great birth-source, 
it ceases as an individual body to exist, and 
passes even before the eyes of onlookers into 
other forms. The fate of these two portions of 
the human entity can hardly be doubted — of 
the innermost central portion, continuance, with 
but slow or secular change, if any; of the 
outermost material shell, immediate decay and 
dissolution. 

What, then, may we suppose is the destiny of 
the other two portions, the human and the animal 
part? I think w* may fairly suppose that they 

87 



88 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

each share to a considerable degree the destiny 
of that extreme to which they are closest related. 
The outer personality or animal life, (3), is most 
closely related to the body. Its passions and de- 
sires (though in themselves psychical and mental 
entities) look always to the body for their expres- 
sion and satisfaction. It is difficult to suppose 
them functioning without the body. We cannot, 
for instance, very well imagine the passion for 
drink without some kind of mouth or gullet 
through which to work (though of course it may 
carry on a sort of dream-activity by representing 
these channels to itself, or creating mental images 
of them). And similarly of the passion of per- 
sonal vanity, or the passion of sex: they refer 
themselves always to the body, in some degree or 
other. 

It is clear then, I think, that when the body 
in death breaks up, these psychic elements which 
function through it and correspond to the various 
parts and organs — these passions and desires, and 
with them the whole animal being — are to some 
extent involved in the ruin. They are (in most 
cases) smitten with dire suffering and confusion. 
A terrible misgiving and dismay assault them; 
and with the break-up and disruption of the body 
they too experience the agonies of disruption, and 
foresee their own dissolution and death. 1 



1 If I seem here to personify unduly these psychic elements 
and to ascribe to them too much in the way of consciousness 
and intelligence, I must refer for explanation to the Note at 
the end of this chapter. 



THE PASSAGE OF DEATH 89 

Yet to conclude from this that these elements 
do absolutely perish, would, I think, be a mistake. 
For these passional entities and this animal soul, 
though they seek the body and manifest them- 
selves through it, are not the same as the body. 
They have a creative power within them. 1 The 
drunkard, as suggested, deprived of his liquor, 
represents furiously to himself in imagination the 
act of drinking: he dreams a gullet a yard long 
and an endless swallow — and in doing so he 
actually moulds and modifies his swallowing ap- 
paratus. The vain man and the sexual similarly 
mould and modify their bodies; they contribute to 
the building of the shapes which they use. And 
this sort of process going on through the ages has 
created the forms of the animals and mankind, 
and their respective members and organs. 2 All 
these things are the expression and manifestation 
and output of the psychical entities and passions 
and qualities underlying — which themselves are 
implicit in the world-soul, which indeed have 
grown up and manifested themselves out of the 
world-soul, and which still deeply though hid- 
denly root back into it. 

The most reasonable and obvious answer, then, 
to the question, What becomes of the animal life 
and its satellite passions when the body dies? 
seems to be that under normal conditions they 
die too — in the sense that they cease to be mani- 
fest. They die, like the body, only with this 

1 See ch. vii., infra, p. 119. 

2 See The Art of Creation, ch. xii. pp. 209, 210, 



90 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

difference, that being psychical — i.e. having a con- 
sciousness and a self underlying, while the body 
dies back into earth and air, they die back into 
the psychic roots from which they originally 
sprang — that is, into that form of the Self or 
World-soul of which they are the manifestation — 
as, for instance, in the case of the animals, into the 
self or soul of the race; in the case of undeveloped 
man, partly into the soul of the race and partly 
into the human soul which is affiliated to the soul 
of the race; and in the case of perfected man, 
entirely into the human soul or inner personality 
which, having now found and established its union 
with the supreme and eternal Self, is no longer 
dependent on the soul of the race, but has en- 
tered into a divine and immortal life of its own. 
Thus in entirely normal cases, both of animals 
and man, we should conclude that the animal soul 
at the time of bodily death may return perfectly 
calmly and naturally into its own roots (as fern- 
fronds die back in winter), and the whole process 
may fulfil itself quite simply and graciously and 
with a minimum of suffering. But this can only 
be expected to happen in instances where in- 
stinctively (as in healthy animals and primitive 
men) or intentionally (as among a few of man- 
kind) the perfect unity, physical and mental, of 
the organism has been preserved. In such cases 
each desire and passion, standing in a close and 
direct relationship to the spirit or self of the 
whole organism, is easily and willingly indrawn 
again at the appointed time; and there is little 



THE PASSAGE OF DEATH 9 1 

or no struggle or agony. But in the great masses 
of mankind — especially in the domains of civiliza- 
tion — where this unity has been lost, it is easily 
seen that many of the passional elements, loosed 
from the true service of the informing spirit, 
carry on a mad and violent career of their own; 
and to curb these or reduce them to orderly ac- 
quiescence and subordination is almost impossible. 
On the contrary, with the general weakening of 
the total organism they often break out into 
greater activity. The ruling passions, "strong in 
death," push themselves to the fore and tyrannize 
over the failing or ageing man, and render his 
actual dissolution stormy and painful ; and not only 
so, but they sometimes generate phantasmal em- 
bodiments of themselves which haunt the dying 
man, or even become visible to outsiders. 

Frederick Myers, dealing with this subject, 1 in- 
vents the term psychorrhagy for this tendency of 
portions of the psyche under certain conditions to 
break loose from the whole man; and thinks that 
this process takes place not only at death, but 
that there are some folk born with what he calls 
a psychorrhagic diathesis, who are consequently 
peculiarly apt for throwing off phantasms of 
one kind or another. He says: 2 — "That which 
'breaks loose' on my hypothesis is not the whole 
principle of life in the organism; rather it is 
some psychical element probably of very varying 
character, and definable mainly by its power of 

* Human Personality, &c, ch. vi. 

9 Ibid. p. 196, edition 1909, edited by L. H. Myert. 



92 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

producing a phantasm, perceptible by one or more 
persons, in some portion or other of space. I 
hold that this phantasmogenetic effect may be 
produced either on the mind, and consequently 
on the brain of another person — in which case he 
may discern the phantasm somewhere in his vicin- 
ity, according to his own mental habit or prepos- 
session — or else directly on a portion of space, 
'out in the open,' in which case several persons 
may simultaneously discern the phantasm in that 
actual spot." 

Myers then proceeds to give a great number 
of very interesting and extremely well-attested 
cases of such phantasms, ranging from merely 
momentary apparitions of persons during their 
life or at the hour of their death to the persistent 
haunting of houses over a long period. And 
I mention this in order to show that there is 
good authority now for believing it possible not 
only that phantasms may be generated by the 
disintegration of the diseased or dying organism, 
which will haunt the patient himself; but that 
in cases the psychic elements generating these 
phantasms may be powerful enough to create 
a ghostly body which may endure, surviving 
the earth-body, and manifesting itself to out- 
side observers on occasions for a considerable 
time. 1 

1 For evidence on the subject of Phantasms, Wraiths, 
Haunted Houses, and so forth, see Phantoms of the Living, 
by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore; and The Report on the 
Census of Hallucinations, Proceedings of the Psychical Re- 
search Society, vol. x.; also L'inconnu et les problems psy- 



THE PASSAGE OF DEATH 93 

So much for the fate of the outer personality 
or animal part. Now with regard to (2), the 
inner personality or human soul, we may ask, 
What becomes of that? And the answer particu- 
larly interests us, because it is with this section 
that we — or at least the more thoughtful of man- 
kind generally — identify "ourselves." It is prob- 
able that almost any reader of these pages would 
credit his "I" or "self," not to the one universal 
Being (to union with whom he may nevertheless 
distantly aspire), nor to the group of terrestrial 
desires and interests which we have termed the 
animal being, but rather to that constellation of 
nobler character which we have called the human 
soul. This, he will say, is the self that truly in- 
terests, that most deeply represents, me. Tell me, 
what becomes of that? 

I think it is obvious that in the hour of death 
there are only two directions in which that hu- 
man soul can turn, in which "we" can turn. We 
can turn for help either outwards toward the 
region of the animal self, or inwards toward the 
central universal self. And I think it equally ob- 
vious that the latter direction can alone really 
supply our need. At first no doubt it may 
be natural to seek outwards; but now alas I 
in the hour of dissolution the man discovers 
that all that region of his nature, in which 
indeed he has often found comfort before, is 

chiques, by Camille Flammarion ; and Lombroso's chapter on 
Haunted Houses, in his book Fenomeni Ipnotici e Spiritici 
(Turin, 1909), ch. xii. ; also ch. viii. of the present book, infra. 



94 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

becoming involved in the ruin above described. 
Large portions of his animal faculties are already 
being torn away — or are sinking into lethargy 
and sleep. His bodily organs are losing their 
vitality; some of them have already become use- 
less. His mental faculties — especially the more 
concrete and external faculties, like the memory 
of events and names — are becoming disintegrated. 
True, his general outlook may in cases seem to 
become wider and more serene as death ap- 
proaches, and his inner character and personality 
to become more luminous and gracious ; but it is 
a perilous passage on which he is embarked and in 
general threatening clouds gather round. The 
consciousness is painfully invaded by the lesser 
mentalities which surround it; the ruling passions 
domineer; silly little habits and tricks, of mind 
and body, obsess the man; phantoms and delirium 
overpower, or seek to overpower, him; he is aston- 
ished and perturbed to find himself on the fringe 
of a world in which figures, half-strange, half- 
familiar, come and go, and force themselves upon 
him with an odd persistence and a rather terrible 
kind of intelligence. It requires all his presence of 
mind to gather himself together, to hold his own, 
to suppress the rebel rout, and to find amid all 
the flux something indomitable and sure to which 
to cling. 

There is clearly only one thing to cling to — 
and this must be insisted on — only that one great 
redeeming universal Self of which we have 
spoken: only that superb omnipresent Life which 



THE PASSAGE OF DEATH 95 

we find in the very central depth of our souls. 
(And fortunate he who has already so far taken 
refuge in this, that the wreck and ruin of the 
visible world and the mortal onset of Death can- 
not dislodge him!) That alone is fixed and sure; 
and to that the personal man must turn. 

And I think we may say that it is not merely 
the personal soul's highest duty and best welfare 
to turn in this direction; but that in a sense and 
by the law of its nature it must do so. For even 
in those cases where the man does not recognize 
this universal Being within, nor consciously be- 
lieve in and hold on to the same, still is it not 
true that unconsciously he is very near and very 
closely related? For all the great qualities which 
we have already described as characterizing the 
most intimate human soul, are they not just 
those which must relate it to the universal Self? 
I mean such things as Equality — the sense 
of inner equality with all human and other 
creatures; Freedom — the sense of freedom from 
local and material bonds; Indifference — indiffer- 
ence as to fate and destiny; Magnanimity; abound- 
ing Charity and Love; dignity; courage; power 
— all these things, are they not obviously the 
qualities which dawn upon the personal soul and 
color it when it is coming into touch with the 
universal? Are they not the natural 'sign and 
symbol' of union or partial union with that Self? 
And more: are there not other things belonging 
more distinctly to the unconscious and subliminal 
region (which we shall deal with presently) — 1 



96 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

I mean such things as deep memory, intui- 
tion, clairvoyance, telepathy, prophetic faculty, 
and so forth — which point to the same con- 
clusion? 

The inner personal soul of man is surely 
already conjoined to the universal, and must 
cling to it by its very nature. And though the 
man may not exactly be conscious of this union; 
though he may hardly really know the depth of 
his own nature; though, notwithstanding his own 
splendid qualities of character, some thin film may 
yet divide him from awareness of the all- 
redeeming Presence; yet none the less that Pres- 
ence is there; and is the core and centre of 
his being. 

That being granted, it seems clear that in the 
disintegration of death the inner personality 
(whether consciously or unconsciously) will cling 
to the eternal self within it. And this seems to 
be the explanation of the part played by Religion 
in the history of the world, and its close con- 
nection with death. The different religions being 
lame attempts to represent under various guises 
this one root-fact of the central universal Life, 
men have at all times clung to the religious 
creeds and rituals and ceremonials as symbolizing 
in some rude way the redemption and fulfilment 
of their own most intimate natures — and this 
whether consciously understanding the interpre- 
tations, or whether (as most often) only doing so 
in an unconscious or quite subconscious way. 

Happy, I say, is the man who has so far 



THE PASSAGE OF DEATH 97 

consciously taken refuge and identified himself 
with the great life that the onset of death fails to 
disturb or dislodge him. For him a wonderful 
passage is prepared — amazing indeed and be- 
wildering, baffling at times and exhausting, yet 
by no means dismaying or terrifying. But for 
the ordinary mortal who has not yet arrived at 
this — for whom the Presence (beheld perhaps 
intermittently before) is now clouded and with- 
drawn from his decisive reach — for such a man 
it would seem best and most natural simply to 
gather and compact himself together as firmly 
as possible, and detaching his mind as well as he 
can from its earthly entanglements and hindrances, 
to launch forth boldly, and with such faith and 
confidence as he can muster, on his strange 
journey. There is a plant of the Syrian deserts 
— the Rose of Jericho — about the size of our com- 
mon daisy plant, and bearing a similar flower, 
which in dry seasons, when the earth about its 
roots is turned into mere sand, has the presence 
of mind to detach itself from its hold altogether 
and to roll itself into a mere ball — flower, root 
and all. It is then blown along the plains by the 
wind and travels away until it reaches some moist 
and sheltered spot, when it expands again, takes 
hold on the ground, uplifts its head, and merrily 
blooms once more. Like the little Rose of 
Jericho, the human soul has at times to draw in 
its roots (which we may compare to the animal 
part) and separate them from their earthly en- 
tanglement; even the sun in heaven, which it knows 



98 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

distantly for the source of its life, may be ob- 
scured; but compacting itself for the nonce 
into a sturdy ball, it starts gaily on its far 
adventure. 

May we presume at all to speculate on the 
soul's actual passage out of this world and its 
experiences on the way? No doubt there are 
queer things to be encountered! I think it is ob- 
vious that if the soul passes out of this terrestrial 
world of ours into another state of existence 
(definite, but quite imperceptible to our present 
senses) there must be a borderland region in which 
phenomena occur of an intermediate character — 
faintly and fitfully perceptible by our present 
faculties, but lacking in the solidity and regularity 
of our present world; borderland phenomena in 
two senses, as being due (a) partly to the break- 
up of our present senses and the present stage 
of existence, and (b) partly to the glimmering per- 
ception of forms and figures belonging to a farther 
stage. 

With regard to (a), it is of course common 
for the mind to 'wander,' and for all sorts 
of phantoms and hallucinations to obsess and 
cloud it in the last stages of illness; and these 
vagaries of the mind are no doubt due to or 
connected with excess or deficiency of circulation 
in the brain, and morbid physical conditions of 
one kind or another. But it ' is possible that 
a wider and more general view than that may 
be taken concerning them. I have already re- 
ferred the reader to the Note at the end of 



THE PASSAGE OF DEATH 99 

this chapter. All our desires and passions are 
psychical entities, having a life and consciousness 
of their own, though affiliated to the total soul 
within which they work. All our organs and 
functions are carried on by intelligences, similarly 
affiliated yet in degree independent. Under 
normal conditions "we" are unaware of these 
entities and intelligences — it is only when they 
rebel that they come decisively to our notice. 
In disease, mental and physical, there is rebellion. 
We become painfully conscious of the inde- 
pendent and often undesired activity of our 
organs, and of our passions — and so, unfor- 
tunately for them, do our friends ! In morbid 
states of mind and body certain functions, certain 
passions, take on an independent vitality to such 
a degree that at last they endue a kind of per- 
sonality and give rise to strings of phantasms 
which we believe to be real. In dreams, though 
there is not exactly rebellion, the higher powers 
of the mental organism being at rest, the lesser 
functionaries similarly display an extraordinary 
and impish activity and present us with amazing 
masquerades of actual life. 

What then, we may ask, does probably happen 
in the moment of death, when the organism has 
become wasted and enfeebled by disease, and when 
the nucleus of the man, the inner personality, has 
compacted itself together into close compass in 
preparation for its long journey? What happens 
to all those marginal desires which have chiefly 
occupied themselves with the affairs of the body 



100 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

or lower mind — those innumerable little spirits 
and imps which (as we discover in dreams, or by 
closely watching our waking thoughts) are con- 
tinually planning and scheming their own little 
successes and gratifications? What happens to 
the thousand and one intelligences which carry 
on the functions and processes of the organism? 
and whose labors, now that the bodily life is 
coming to an end, are no more needed? Is 
there not a danger — or at least a likelihood — of 
this strange masquerade of dreamland, of these 
painful obsessions of disease, being repeated with 
ever-increased intensity? True, that if the 
organism has been kept so well in hand during 
life as to cause all outlying passions and desires to 
weaken and become quiescent simultaneously 
with the body — or at least to go back quietly 
into the kennels of a long sleep — like a pack of 
hounds when the chase is over — then these 
phantoms, these obsessions, may in that last hour 
be conspicuous by their absence. But since in 
the vast majority of cases this is not, and cannot 
be so, it seems more probable that as a rule the 
departing soul will make its exit, not only through 
the perishing bodily part, but through a mass 
of debris, as it may be called, of the mind 
(chiefly though perhaps not entirely "the animal 
mind"), through a cloud of tags and tatters of 
mentality, thrown off in the final crisis. It seems 
probable that just as the actual body, bereft at 
death of its one pervading vitality, breaks out in 
a mass of corruption or minute multitudinous 



THE PASSAGE OF DEATH '1 01" 

life, so there is a tendency, at any rate, for the 
lower mind to break out into a strange ghostly 
rabble — a cloud of phantasms, exhaled and pro- 
jected from the dying person. Of these phan- 
tasms most, no doubt, are only visible to the 
patient himself (though that does not render 
them any more agreeable as visitors) ; others are 
discernible by clairvoyants present; while others 
again are distinctly seen even by persons at a 
distance in space or time — as in the numerous 
and well-authenticated instances of "wraiths." 
The picture is not altogether pleasant, but it has 
a certain general congruity with admitted facts, 
and with a fairly-accepted body of tradition 
and theory; and provisionally I suppose we may 
accept it. 

It seems likely, then, that the passage of the in- 
ner self, or human soul, out of life and its deliv- 
ery in another world, the other side of death, may 
very closely correspond to Birth — to the birth of 
a babe under ordinary conditions into this world. 
Just as the babe, when being born, passes through 
the lower passages of the body, so the human self 
at death is expelled inwardly through all the 
debris and litter of the mind, into another less 
material and more subtle world than ours. And 
just as the pangs of childbirth are bad — but they 
are so mainly beforehand and in preparation, 
while the actual delivery is swift and a vast re- 
lief — so, in cases, the pains and anguish in 
preparation for death may be great (the squeal- 
ing of demons torn from their hold on the soul, 



102 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

the cries of intelligences cut off from their co- 
operative life and source of sustenance in the 
body, the fears and distress of the animal mind, 
the yellow fury of the passions, and the death- 
struggles of the various organs !) yet the final pas- 
sage itself may be calm and gracious and friendly. 
Anyhow, as in other cases of human experi- 
ence, it would be a mistake to depict this one as 
by any means uniform in its character. On the 
contrary, it is probably susceptible of great 
variety. The Head of a Department (if it 
becomes necessary for him to leave his post) may 
find, in one case, that he is turned out, so to 
speak, with kicks — that he has to run the 
gauntlet of the execrations of his subordinates; 
or in another case he may leave amid the expres- 
sion of every 7 good wish, and along a path made 
pleasant and easy for him; or again he may go 
"trailing clouds of glory," and with a retinue of 
followers behind him, who refuse to remain now 
that their leader is departing. Some such differ- 
ences possibly, and we may say probably, present 
themselves in the passage of death. The experi- 
ence of childbirth varies to an extraordinary 
degree. We hear of Indian tribeswomen who 
only go aside for an hour while their people are 
on the march, and then rejoin them again at the 
next halting-place. And who knows but what 
Death and the preparation for it might be as easy 
— if only the doctors and the sky-pilots would 
hurry up and tell us something really useful, 
instead of spending their time in vivisecting the 



THE PASSAGE OF DEATH IO3 

wretched animals, or in mumbling over ancient 
creeds? 

Now, with regard to the second kind of bor- 
derland phenomena, (&), the glimmering percep- 
tion in death of forms and figures or conditions 
of being belonging to a farther stage of existence: 
I do not propose at present to dwell upon this 
matter at any length. But with modern psychical 
research there has come a good deal of evidence 
to show that on deathbeds it not at all unfre- 
quently happens that distinct and ardent recog- 
nition of departed friends takes place; and 
though, no doubt, it may seem possible to explain 
these as cases in which the simple memory of a 
departed friend is very powerfully resuscitated, 
still this explanation hardly covers a good many 
cases — such as those for instance in which the 
dying person was unaware that the friend had 
died, and yet apparently recognized him as a 
visitor from the beyond-world. 1 Also of course, 
modern research has brought forward some 
amount of testimony in favor of actual communi- 
cations with the departed through the agency of 
entranced mediums; so that, though this whole 
matter is still sub judice, we may with fair reason 
suppose that both in trance-conditions and in the 
hour of death there are not merely apparitions 
and phenomena due to disintegrations on this side 
of the border, but also some kind of real commu- 
nications and manifestations from the other side. 

Anyhow, it is clear that each person's experi- 

*See Carrington and Meader, op. cit. pp. 318-27. 



104 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

ence of death is likely to depend a good deal on 
the question as to where the centre of gravity of 
his self-consciousness is placed; and that — as a 
part of the Art of dying — the object of our en- 
deavor should be to throw (during life) the self- 
consciousness inward into that part of our being 
which is durable and immortal in its nature, into 
that part in which we are united, and feel our 
union, with other creatures, into that portion 
where the word itself (self-consciousness) ceases 
to have a petty and sinister meaning and becomes 
transformed with a glorious signification. In 
that case it is indeed likely that the soul may be 
endowed beforehand with divine vision. It must 
be our object, by throwing our consciousness 
always that way, to strengthen the power of the 
inner soul over the outer personality and all its 
functions, and at the same time to rivet more 
and more the hold of that inner soul on the One 
Self (the source of all vitality and centre of limit- 
less power, if we only understand it so) — so that 
ultimately the outer and animal personality 
(though always beautiful in its nature and 
not to be despised) ceases largely to have an 
independent and uncoordinated vitality of its 
own, or to be the scene of uncontrolled activities 
and conflict, and becomes more the expression 
and instrument of the inner self: to such a de- 
gree indeed that at the dissolution of the body the 
animal soul, passing into slumber, easily dies 
down to its deep roots in the human soul, there 
of course to await its future reawakening, and 



THE PASSAGE OF DEATH IO5 

thus leaving the latter liberated from earth- 
entanglement and free to start (like the Syrian 
rose) on its long journey. 

In this freeing for the forward journey there 
must, one would think, be a great sense of joy 
and satisfaction — even as there must be in the 
freeing of a May-fly from its water-bred pupa 
into the glory of air and sunshine. Just as it 
obviously is (notwithstanding some drawbacks) 
a joy to the Babe to enter upon its new life, 
so it may well be that to the dying person — 
notwithstanding the perils of the change, the 
fears of the unknown, the parting with friends, 
the apparent rending of cherished ties — there is 
a strange joy in shelling off the old husks, and 
in getting rid of the accumulations and dead rub- 
bish of a lifetime. A thousand and one tiresome 
old infirmities and bonds of body and mind — 
now for the first time realized in their true 
meaning — slip off; and the ship of the soul, u to 
port and hawser's tie no more returning," departs 
with a strange thrill and quiver upon its "endless 
cruise." 

The details of this launch and departure we 
cannot of course ordain. The mode of death is 
not always within our sphere to determine. Ac- 
cident may decide, or some hereditary weakness 
for which the individual can hardly be held 
responsible. Some diseases are by their nature 
hard upon the patient; others are kindly in their 
course. In those that bring great weakness of 
body there is sometimes an easy passage — the 



106 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

earthly and corporeal part relaxing its hold, while 
the mind and character become heavenly-clear. 
In others of an inflammatory nature, or where 
there is great organic vitality, there may be severe 
and prolonged struggle. Anyhow, one can imag- 
ine the relief when the process is complete. It 
is not uncommon to experience a strange expan- 
sion of the spirit on occasions when the body 
is seriously weakened by ordinary illness. What 
must this expansion be when the body finally 
succumbs — this sense of immensely enlarged life, 
this impression of sailing forth toward a new and 
boundless ocean! How strange to stand a 
moment on the brink of terrestrial mortality, and 
to be conscious of — to see, even with the inner 
visual power — the shell one has left behind, with 
all its commonplace and banal surroundings : con- 
crete indeed and material enough, but lying now 
outside oneself — something almost foreign to one 
and indifferent, abandoned on the very margin and 
shore of real life; to stand for a moment; 
and then to turn and pass inward into that 
subtle and immense ethereal existence, now to be 
learnt and explored, which lies within and informs 
and transfuses all our solid world, and surpasses 
all its boundaries ! 



CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BODY; IO7 



NOTE TO CHAPTER VI 

In order not to burden this already rather lengthy 
chapter with matter which may not be needed, I append 
here some general considerations for those who have 
not given much attention to the subject of the various 
grades of consciousness in the body — considerations 
tending to show that the various parts and passions 
of the body and mind have a life and intelligence of 
their own, and that the whole human organism is a 
hierarchy (not always perfectly harmonious) of psychic 
entities. 

We generally allow of course that our central or 
dominant selves are alive and conscious (though no 
doubt w T e use those epithets with a rather sad vague- 
ness). But having allowed that, the extraordinary 
phenomena of variable and alternating personality compel 
us to admit that there may be many such centres within 
one person, each of which though now buried may in 
its turn become dominant and take conscious lead, and 
which must therefore be credited with life and intelli- 
gence (even if an alien life and intelligence to "our 
own"). Even the most ordinary brain-centres are in 
the habit of carrying on whole departments of the bodily 
organization with an independent intelligence of their 
own, and are sometimes liable under the influence of 
some excitement (like drink, of religion, or some en- 
thusiasm) to take possession of the whole man and 
transform him into another creature — exhibiting in doing 
so a strange degree of invasive vitality and alertness. 
It is quite certain that the myriad microscopic cells of 
the body are alive, each with its own little particular 



108 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

life; and the more one studies these cells the more diffi- 
cult it is not to credit them each, in their degree, with 
a particular consciousness or intelligence. And each 
body-organ again, composed of a congeries or colony of 
body-cells, has a life of its own on and beyond that of 
its component cells, and exhibits curious signs too of 
intelligence and emotion, which often (especially in sick- 
ness) affect the moods and thoughts of the entire man. 
The whole of the subconscious world, in fact — that 
world which only occasionally breaks through into the 
upper consciousness — must be allowed to be alive, and 
in its various degrees methodical and calculating. This 
is well seen in the phenomena of dreams and of hypno- 
tism, in both of which the most acute and diabolical in- 
genuity is often shown — as of weird imps working in 
dark chambers of the brain quite unbeknown to their 
supposed lord and master; or in the extraordinary phe- 
nomena of trance and "automatic" speaking and writing; 
or in telepathy and clairvoyance; or again in the crafti- 
ness of utter lunatics; or in the strange evasions and 
mental dodgery which (as just hinted) are induced by 
diseases of certain organs ; or in the phenomena of mental 
healing, where an appeal to the subconscious intelligence 
in any and every corner of the body is often followed 
by extraordinary response; or in the subtle instinctive 
knowledge and perception of babes, and of animals, long 
before se //-consciousness has developed; or again, in the 
sly cunning of ancient dotards; or in the complex bodily 
reflexes carried on perfectly unknown to ourselves dur- 
ing life; or in the continued functioning of some of the 
organs after death. In all these cases, and in scores of 
others not mentioned, it is clear that the majority of 
the processes of the human system are carried on by 
minor intelligences. They are indeed carried on by 
crowds of minor intelligences — to which we accord the 



CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BODY IO9 

epithet "automatic," and which no doubt we regard as 
mechanical, as long, that is, as they work smoothly and 
without friction and opposition. But when they do not 
do so, when pain, disease and lunacy cut in — when a 
violent burn sets the epithelial cells screaming, and the 
scream comes into our consciousness as the vibration of 
pain; when a diseased liver twists the events of life and 
the faces of our friends into malignant shape and mien; 
when lust and hypochondria people the mind with phan- 
toms; and drink makes all the functions mad — then we 
say we are "possessed with devils," then we recognize, if 
only on the dark side, the pervading intelligence or in- 
telligences of the body. 

It is like the Head of a Department, as I have said, 
whose subordinate officials are working under him agree- 
ably and harmoniously. As long as that is the case, he 
may have in his mind a general outline of the working 
of the Department. He probably is ignorant of most 
of the details; he certainly does not know personally 
many of his subordinates, but he superintends the work- 
ing of the whole. Presently, however, occurs something 
of a strike or emeute; whereupon he discovers that vast 
numbers of his men are intelligently discussing questions 
or problems of whose existence he was almost ignorant; 
personalities appear before him whom, before, he knew 
at most only by name; and they argue their case with an 
acumen and vitality which surprises him. For the first 
time, in this revolt of his department, he comes to realize 
the amount of intelligent activity which is at work within 
it, beneath the surface. So it is with us in the case 
of disease. In health we have no trouble, unity pre- 
vails. As long as "we" are on top, and the intelligences 
which carry on the body are working on friendly terms 
with us, their minds do not intrude into our realm, and 
we are practically unaware of them. But when through 



110 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

our mismanagement or other cause dissension breaks out, 
then indeed we realize what kind of forces they are 
with which we have to deal, and of what a wonderful 
hierarchy of intelligences the body is composed. 1 

1 Dr. Morton Prince's study, The Dissolution of a Person- 
ality (Longmans, 1906), should be read, as going deeply into 
the whole subject. He suggests (p. 530) the use of the word 
"co-consciousness," to indicate the secondary chains of mental 
operation which coexist side by side with or beneath the 
primary. Dr. R. Assagioli, in his pamphlet II Subcosciente 
(Florence, 1911), also follows the same line. 






CHAPTER VII 

IS THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE? 

In the last chapter Death was compared to Birth, 
and it was said that probably the passage of the 
human soul into another world, on the other 
side of death, exactly corresponded to Birth — 
to the birth of a babe into this world. And 
certainly, seeing these apparent movements into 
the visible and away from it again, it is very 
natural to assume that there is such another 
and hidden world, and to speculate upon its 
nature. 

But it may fairly be asked, is there after all 
any reason for supposing that there is a definite 
state of existence of any kind on that side? 
Is it not quite likely that there is only vacancy 
and nothingness, or at best a mere formless pulp 
(of ether and electrons, or whatever it may be) 
out of which souls are born and into which they 
return again at death? It is this question which 
I propose to discuss in the present chapter. 

Historically speaking, we know of course that 
early and primitive folk, letting their imagina- 
tions loose, peopled that 'other side' and rather 
promiscuously, with all sorts of fairy beings and 
phantom processions. Giant grizzly bears, di- 

iii 



112 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

vine jackals, elves, dwarfs, satans, holy ghosts, 
lunar pitris, flaming sun-gods, and so forth, ruled 
and raged behind the curtain — in front of which 
the shivering mortal stood. But as time went on, 
the growing exactitude of thought and science 
made it more and more impossible to idly accept 
these imaginings; and it may be said that about 
the middle of last century these cosmogonies — 
for the more thoughtful among the populations 
of the Western world — finally perished, and gave 
place for the most part to a simple negative at- 
titude. It was allowed that intelligences and per- 
sonalities (human and animal) moved on this 
side of the veil, and were plainly distinguishable 
as operating in the actual world; but they, it was 
held, were more or less isolated and probably 
accidental products of a mechanical universe. 
That mechanical arrangement of atoms, and so 
forth, which we could now largely map out and 
measure, and which doubtless in the future we 
should be able completely to define — that was the 
universe, and somehow or other included every- 
thing. One of its properties was that it would 
run down like a clock, and would eventuate in 
time in a cold sun and a dead earth — and there 
was an end of it ! Any intelligent existence be- 
hind or on the other side of this veil of mechan- 
ism was too problematical to be worth discussing; 
in all probability on that side was mere nothing- 
ness and vacancy. 

Such, very roughly stated, was the attitude of 
the fairly intelligent and educated man about 



IS THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE? II3 

fifty years ago, but since that time the outgrowths 
of science and human inquiry have been so 
astounding as to leave that position far behind. 
The obvious signs of intelligence in the minutest 
cells, almost invisible to the naked eye, the 
very mysterious arcana of growth in such cells 
(partly described in a former chapter), the 
myriad action of similarly intelligent microbes, 
the strange psychology of plants, and the equally 
strange psychic sensitiveness (apparently) of 
metals, the sudden transformations and variations 
both of plants and animals, the existence of the X 
and N rays of light, and of countless other vi- 
brations of which our ordinary senses render no 
account, the phenomena of radium and radiant 
matter, the marvels of wireless telegraphy, the 
mysterious facts connected with hypnotism and 
the subliminal consciousness, and the certainty 
now that telepathic communication can take place 
between human beings thousands of miles apart — 
all these things have convinced us that the subtlest 
forces and energies, totally unmeasurable by our 
instruments, and saturated or at least suffused 
with intelligence, are at work all around us. They 
have convinced us that gloomy phrases about cold 
suns and dead earths are mere sentiment and 
nonsense. Cold worlds there may certainly be, 
but nothing is more certain than that worlds on 
worlds, and spheres on spheres, stretch behind 
and beyond the actually seen — spheres so micro- 
scopic as to totally elude us, or so vast and cosmic 
as to elude, spheres of vibration which elude, 



114 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

spheres of other senses than ours, spheres 
aerial, ethereal, magnetic, mental, subliminal. 
The iris-veil of our ordinary existence may truly 
be rent, but the visible world, the world we 
know, is no longer now a film on the surface 
of an empty bubble, but a curtain concealing 
a vast and teeming life, reaching down endless, 
in layer on layer, into the very heart of the 
universe. And whereas, in the former time of 
which I have been speaking, we might have 
agreed that life could not well continue after 
the death of the body, to-day we should, as a 
first guess, be inclined to think that life is more 
full and rich on the other side of death than 
on this side. U I do not doubt," says Whitman, 
u that from under the feet and beside the hands 
and face I am cognizant of, are now looking 
faces I am not cognizant of, calm and actual faces 
— I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, 
and exteriors have their exteriors, and that the 
eyesight has another eyesight, and the hearing 
another hearing, and the voice another voice. " 

We come, then, to this problem of Death and 
Birth in a similarly modified spirit, and with a 
predisposition to believe that they do really indi- 
cate passages from one definite world or plane or 
region of existence to another. And here is the 
place to point out, and to guard ourselves against, 
a common error in the use of the word Death. 
Death is not a state. There may be an after- 
death state; but death itself is the passage into 
that state, or — better — the passage out of the 



IS THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE? 115 

present state. So Birth is not a state. There 
may be a pre-birth state; but birth itself is 
the passage into the present state. Either we 
pass through death into another life and con- 
dition of being; or else we are extinguished. 
In the former case there is clearly no state of 
death; and in the latter case there is no such 
state — because there is no self to be dead 
or to know itself dead. As Lucretius says, 1 
endeavoring to disabuse man of the fear of the 
grave : — 

"So to be mortal fills his mind with dread, 
Forgetting that in real death can be 
No self, to mourn that other self as dead, 
Or stand and weep at death's indignity." 

Birth and Death, then, we may look upon as 
two contrary movements, to some degree com- 
plementary and balancing each other; and it is 
possible that thus, from consideration of the one, 
we may be able to infer things about the other. 
One such thing that we may be able to infer is 
that Love presides over, or is intimately asso- 
ciated with, both movements. 

The connection of Love with Birth is of course 
obvious. In some profound yet hidden way, al- 
most throughout creation, the birth or genera- 
tion of one creature is connected with the prece- 
dent love and sex-fusion of two others. And 
the connection of Love with Death, though not 
so prominent, can similarly almost everywhere 
1 Be Berum Natura, iii. 890, translated by Mr. H. S. Salt. 



Il6 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

be traced. The whole of poetry in literature 
teems with this subject; and so does the poetry 
of Nature ! If we are to believe the Garden 
of Eden story, Love and Death came into the 
world together; and it certainly is curious that 
in the age-long evolution of animal forms the 
same thing seems to have happened. The Pro- 
tozoa at first, propagating by simple division, 
were endued with a kind of immortality. But 
then came a period when a pair found they 
could enter into a joint life of renewed fecundity 
by fusing with each other. They literally died 
in each other, and rose again in a numerous 
progeny; so that love and death were simul- 
taneous and synonymous. Sometimes parturition 
and death were simultaneous. The mother-cell 
perished in the very act of giving birth to her 
brood. Then again came the aggregation of cells 
into living groups — the formation of 'colonial' 
organisms; and it was then that distinctive sex- 
differentiation and sex-organs appeared, and with 
the capacity of sex also the capacity of death 
through the disruption of the colony. Every- 
where love is associated with death. The ex- 
penditure of seed in the male animal is an 
incipient death; the formation of the seed 
vessel, and the glory and color of the flower- 
ing plant, are already the signs of its decay. 
"Both Weismann and Goette," say Geddes and 
Thomson, 1 "note how many insects (locusts, 
butterflies, ephemerids, and so forth) die a few 

x See Geddes and Thomson, Evolution of Sex (1901), p. 275. 



IS THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE? 117 

hours after the production of ova. The ex- 
haustion is fatal, and the males are also involved. 
In fact, as we should expect from the katabolic 
temperament, it is the males which are especially 
liable to exhaustion. . . . Every one is familiar 
with the close association of love and death in 
the common May-flies. Emergence into winged 
liberty, the love-dance, and the process of fertil- 
ization, the deposition of eggs, and the death of 
both parents, are often the crowded events of a 
few hours. In higher animals, the fatality of 
the reproductive sacrifice has been greatly les- 
sened, yet death may tragically persist, even in 
human life, as the direct Nemesis of love." 

George Macdonald, in one of his books 
{Phantasies, vol. i. p. 191), feigns a race of 
beings, for whom death is not so much the 
'nemesis' of love, as its natural and inevitable 
outcome. Seized by a great love, too great for 
mortal expression, "looking too deep into each 
other's eyes," they (with great presence of mind, 
it must be said!) breathe their souls out in death, 
and so take their departure to another world. 
Heine touches the same note in his poem, the 
"Asra":— 

"Ich bin aus Jemen, 
Und mein stamm sind jene Asra, 
Welche sterben wenn sie lieben." 

And scores of scarcely noticed paragraphs in 
our daily papers, brief tales of single or double 
suicide, present us with a dim outline of how 



II 8 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

— even in the mean conditions and surroundings 
of our modern days — every now and then there 
comes to one or other a longing, a passion, and a 
revelation of a desire so intense, that, breaking 
the bounds of a useless life, it demands swift ut- 
terance in death. 

Some deep and profound suggestion there is in 
all this — some hint of a life whose very form and 
nature is love, and which finds its deliverance and 
nativity only through the abandonment of the 
body — even as our ordinary life, conceived in 
love, finds its delivery into this world through 
what we call birth. At the very least it suggests 
that Death may have a great deal more to do 
with Love, and may be more deeply allied to it 
than is generally supposed. And it may suggest 
that the two things, being in some sense the most 
important occupations of the human race, should 
be frankly recognized as such, and should both be 
accordingly prepared for. 

Another thing, about which we may be able to 
infer something from the analogy between Birth 
and Death, is the fate of the soul at death. If 
we can trace in any way the relation of the soul 
to the body at the time of the first appearance of 
the latter, that may shed light on the relation 
which will- hold at its disappearance. We cannot 
certainly define very strictly what we mean by 
the word 'soul' ; but we are all very well aware 
that associated with our bodies, and in some sense 
pervading them with its intelligence, is a conscious 
(as well as subconscious) being which we call the 



IS THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE? II9 

self or soul; and we are all puzzled at times to 
understand what is the relation between this and 
the body. Now we have seen (ch. ii.) the gen- 
esis of the body from a single fertilized cell or 
germ almost microscopic in size, and its growth 
by continual and myriadfold division into, say, 
a human form; and we have seen that every cell 
in the perfect and final form — every cell, of 
eye, or liver, or of any part or organ — is there 
by linear descent or division from that first 
cell, though variously adapted and differentiated 
during the process. We are therefore almost 
compelled to conclude that that intelligent self 
(conscious or subconscious) which we are so dis- 
tinctly aware of as associated with our mature 
bodies was there also, associated with the first 
germ. 1 It may not truly have been outwardly 
manifest or unfolded into evidence at that primi- 
tive stage. It could not well be. But it was 
there, even in its totality, and unless it had been 
there, we could not now be what we are. The 
conscious and subconscious self has been within 
us all along, unfolding and manifesting itself 
with the unfoldment and development of the 
body; and indeed to all appearances guiding 
that development. And more, we may fairly 
say — having regard to the mode of development 
of the tissue — that it dwells even in its entirety 
within every normal and healthy cell of our 



1 See ch. ii. p. 18, supra; also, for amplification of this view, 
Myers's, Human Personality, op. cit., edition 1909, pp. 90, 91. 



120 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

present bodies, and is the formative essence 
thereof. 

Let me give an illustration. Sometimes in the 
morning you may see a bush glittering all over 
with dewdrops; every leaf has such a tiny jewel 
hanging from it. If now you look you will see 
in each dewdrop a miniature picture of the far 
landscape. Or, to take a closer illustration, 
some shrubs have, embedded in the very tissue 
of their leaves, tiny transparent and lens-like 
glands which yield to close scrutiny similar 
miniatures of the world beyond. Exactly, then, 
like these plants, we may think of the whole 
human body as trembling in light — each cell con- 
taining (if we could but see it!) a luminous 
image of the presiding genius or self of the 
body. 

The question is often asked: Where is the 
self? does it reside in the head, or in the heart, 
or perhaps in the liver? is it an aural halo 
pervading and surrounding the body, or is it a 
single microscopic cell far hidden in the interior, 
or is it an invisible atom? Here apparently is the 
answer. It animates every cell. It pervades the 
whole body, and seeks expression in every part 
of it. Some cells, as we have said before, are 
differentiated so as to express especially this 
faculty, others to express especially that; but 
the human soul or self stands behind them all. 
Look at a baby's face, and its growing sparkling 
expression — an individual being coming newly 
into the world, obviously seeking, feeling, tenta- 



IS THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE? 121 

tively finding its way forward — every morning a 
thinnest veil falling from its features ! Playing 
through the whole body, is an intelligence, seek- 
ing expression. Helen Keller, the girl both deaf 
and blind, describes most graphically her agoniz- 
ing experiences at the age of six or seven, when 
her growing powers of body and mind demanded 
the expression which her physical disabilities so 
cruelly denied. "The desire to express myself 
grew," 1 she says; "the few signs I used became 
less and less adequate, and my failures to make 
myself understood were invariably followed by 
outbursts of passion. I felt as if invisible hands 
were holding me, and I made frantic efforts to 
free myself." And then most touching, the de- 
scription of her relief, "the thrill of surprise, the 
joy of discovery," when she at last, about the age 
of ten, was able to utter her first intelligible 
words. In some degree like Helen Keller's is 
perhaps the experience of every babe that is born 
into the world. 

It seems to me, therefore, that each person is 
practically compelled to think of his 'self as 
moving behind or as associated with or animating 
every cell in the healthy body; and as having 
been so associated with the first germ of the same, 
even though that was a thing well-nigh invisible 
to the naked eye. You were there, you are 
there now, at the root of your bodily life. You 
may not, certainly, except at moments, be dis- 
tinctly conscious of this your complete relation 
1 The Story of My Life, by Helen Keller (1U08), p. 17. 



122 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

to the body; but, as we have already said, the 
term self must be held to include the large sub- 
conscious tracts which occasionally flash up 
into consciousness, and which, when they do so 
flash, almost always confirm this relation; nor 
must we lose from sight the still more deeply 
buried physiological or animal soul, whose opera- 
tions we seem to be able to trace from earliest 
days, guiding all the complex of organic growth 
and development, and apparently conscious in 
its own way with a very wonderful sort of in- 
telligence. 1 

All this compels us, I think, not only to picture 
to ourselves the mental self or soul as associated 
with the body, and taking part in its development 
from the first inception of the latter; but also 
to picture that self as in its entirety considerably 
greater and more extensive than the ordinary 
conscious self, and even as greater than any bod- 
ily expression or manifestation which it suc- 
ceeds in gaining. We are compelled, I think, to 
regard the real self as at all times only partially 
manifested. 

I think this latter point is obvious; for when, 
and at what period in life, is manifestation com- 
plete? Certainly not in babyhood, when the 
faculties are only unfolding; certainly not in 
old age, when they are decaying and falling away. 
Is it, then, in maturity and middle life? But 
during all that period the. output of expression 

1 For a further account of the subliminal or underlying self, 
see next chapter. 



IS THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE? 1 23 

and character in a man is constantly changing; 
and which of all these changes of raiment is com- 
pletely representative? Do we not rather feel 
that to express our real selves every phase from 
childhood through maturity even into extreme 
old age ought to be taken into account? Nay, 
more than that; for have we not — perhaps most 
of us — a profound feeling and conviction that 
there are elements deep down in our natures, 
which never have been expressed, and never can 
or will be expressed in our present and actual 
lives? Do we not all feel that our best is only a 
fraction of what we want to say? And what must 
we think of the strange facts of multiple person- 
ality? Do they not suggest that our real self has 
facets so opposite, so divergent, that for a long 
time they may appear quite disconnected with each 
other; until ultimately (as has happened in actual 
cases) they have been visibly reconciled and har- 
monized in a new and more perfect char- 
acter? 

With regard to this view that the real person 
is so much greater than his visible manifestation, 
Frederick Myers and Oliver Lodge have used 
the simile of a ship. And it is a fine one. A 
ship gliding through the sea has a manifestation 
of its own, a very partial one, in the waterworld 
below — a ponderous hull moving in the upper 
layers of that world — a form encrusted with 
barnacles and sea-weed. But what denizen of 
the deep could have any inkling or idea of the 
real life of that ship in the aerial plane — the 



124 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

glory of sails and spars trimmed to the breeze 
and glancing in the sun, the blue arch of heaven 
flecked with clouds, the leaping waves and the 
boundless horizon around the ship as she speeds 
onward, the ingenious provision for her voyage, 
the compass, the helmsman and the captain direct- 
ing her course? Surely (except in moments of 
divination and inspiration) we have little idea of 
what we really are! But there are such mo- 
ments — moments of profound grief, of passion- 
ate love, of great and splendid angers and 
enthusiasms which dart light back into the 
farthest recesses of our natures and astonish us 
with the vision they disclose. And (perhaps 
more often) there are moments which disclose 
the wonder-self in others. If we do not recognize 
(which is naturally not easy!) our own divinity, 
it is certain that we cannot really love without 
discovering a divine being in the loved one — 
a being remote, resplendent, inaccessible, who 
calls for and indeed demands our devotion, but 
of whom the mortal form is most obviously a 
mere symbol and disguise. There are times 
when this strange illumination falls on people 
at large, and we see them as gods walking : when 
we look even on the tired overworked mother 
in the slum, and her face is shining like heaven; 
or on the ploughboy in the field with his team, 
and see the mould and the material of ancient 
heroes. Yet of what is really nearest to them 
all the time these folk say nothing, and we are 
astonished to find them haggling over halfpence 



IS THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE? 1 25 

or seriously troubled about wire-worms. It is 
as if a play, or some kind of deliberate mystifica- 
tion, were being carried on — with disguises a 
little too thin. We see, as plain as day — and 
nothing can contravene our conclusion — that it 
is only a fraction of the real person that is 
concerned. 

Your self, then, I say — covering by that word 
not only all that you and your friends usually 
include in it, but probably a good deal more — 
existed, with all its potentialities and capacities 
even in association with the first primitive germ 
of your present body. 1 That germ was micro- 
scopic in size, and its inner workings and trans- 
formations were ultra-microscopic in character. 
We do not know whence they originated; and 



*The only alternative to this seems to be to suppose that 
the "soul" comes into association with the body, not at the 
very first inception of the latter, but at some later pre-natal 
or post-natal stage, when the body is already partially or 
wholly built up by the primitive process of cell-division — that 
the soul then takes possession of the organism so formed, and 
makes use of it for self-expression; and finally at death dis- 
cards it. This theory — though it seems a possible one, and 
in accordance with the apparent "possession" and control of 
the bodies of trance mediums by independent spirits — presents 
some difficulties. One difficulty is the absence of any obvious 
or acknowledged period when such entry of the soul takes 
place; another is the difficulty of seeing how a real and effec- 
tive harmony could be permanently established between a body 
already formed and organized on hereditary lines, and an inde- 
pendent soul entering on its own errand at a later date. These 
(and other) difficulties, however, are not insuperable, and it 
may well be, in the great variety of Nature, that the process 
of incarnation actually does take place in both ways — i.e. in 
the way outlined in this note, as well as (more generally) in 
the way mentioned in the text. 



126 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

whether we think of the soul which was associ- 
ated with them as ultra-microscopic in its nature 
or as fourth-dimensional does not much matter. 
We only perceive that it, the soul, must have 
been there, in an unseen world of some kind, 
pushing forward toward its manifestation in the 
visible. 1 I do not think we can well escape this 
conclusion. 

But if w T e conclude that the soul existed before 
Birth, or, more properly, at or before conception, 
in some such invisible world, then that it should 
so exist after Death is equally possible, nay, 
probable. For after conception, by continual 
multiplication and differentiation of cells, the 
soul framed for itself organs of expression and 
manifestation, and thus gradually came into our 
world of sight and sense and ordinary intelli- 
gence; and so, by some reverse process, we may 
suppose that in decay and death the soul gradu- 
ally loses these organs and their coordination, 
and retires into the invisible. Whatever the na- 
ture of this invisible may be — whether, as I say, 
a world of things too minute for human percep- 
tion, or too vast for the same, or whether a 
world which eludes us by the simple artifice of 
everywhere and in everything running parallel 
to the things of the world — only in another 
dimension imperceptible to us — in any case it 
seems reasonable to suppose that the soul is 
still there, fulfilling its nature and its destiny, 

x See The Art of Creation, 1908, p. 82 et seq. Compare also 
Bergson's "elan vital," in L'Evolution Creatrice, p. 100 et seq. 



IS THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE? 1 27 

of which its earth-life has only been one 
episode. 1 

And if the apparent loss of consciousness (the 
loss of the ordinary consciousness at any rate) 
which often takes place during the death-change, 
seems to point to extinction and not to continu- 
ance, I think that that need not disturb us. For 
in sleep, in our nightly sleep, the same suspension 
of the ordinary consciousness takes place, as we 
very well know ; yet all the time the subconscious- 
ness is functioning away — sorting out sounds, 
bidding us wake for some, allowing us to sleep 
through others, discriminating disturbances, car- 
rying on the physiologies of the body, posting 
sentinels in the reflexes — and guarding us from 
harm — till untired in the morning it knits to- 
gether again the ravelled thread of the ordinary 
consciousness and renews our waking activities. 
And if this happens in our ordinary and nightly 
sleep, it seems at any rate possible that some- 
thing similar may happen in death. Indeed 

*The Upanishads, whose authority on these subjects is 
surely great, seem often to try to express the other-dimen- 
sional nature of the soul by a paradox of opposites. "The 
self, smaller than small (or more subtle than subtle), greater 
than great, is hidden in the heart of each creature" (Katha- 
Up. I. Adh. 2 valli. 20; also Svetasvatara-Up. III. Adh. 20) — 
or again, "The embodied soul is to be thought like the hun- 
dredth part of the point of a hair, divided into a hundred 
parts; he is to be thought infinite" (Svet.-Up. v. 9). And 
the last quoted passage continues: "He is not woman, he is 
not man, nor hermaphrodite; whatever body he assumes, with 
that he is joined (only) ; and as by the use of food and drink 
the body grows, so the individual soul, by means of thoughts, 
touching, seeing and the passions, assumes successively in vari- 
ous places various forms in accordance with his deeds." 



128 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

there is much evidence to show that while at the 
hour of death the supraliminal consciousness often 
passes into a state of quiescence or abeyance, 
the subliminal, or at any rate some portion of 
the subliminal, becomes unusually active. Audi- 
tion grows strangely keen — so much so that it is 
sometimes difficult to tell whether the things 
heard have been apprehended by extension of the 
ordinary faculty or whether by a species of clair- 
audience. Vision similarly passes into clairvoy- 
ance, the patient becomes extraordinarily sensitive 
to telepathic influences, and knows what is 
going on at a distance ; 1 and not only so, but 
he radiates influences to a distance. All the 
phenomena of wraiths and dying messages, now 
so well substantiated — of apparitions and im- 
pressions projected with force at the moment of 
death into the minds of distant friends — prove 
clearly the increased activity and vitality (one 
may say) of the subliminal self at that time; and 
this points, as I say, not to extinction and disor- 
ganization, but perhaps to the transfer of con- 
sciousness more decisively into hidden regions of 
our being. One hears sometimes of a dying per- 
son who, prevented from departure by the tears 
and entreaties of surrounding friends, cries out 
"Oh! let me die!" and one remembers the case, 
above mentioned, of the apparently dead mother 
who, so to speak, called herself back to life by 
the thought of her orphaned children. Such 
cases as these do not look like loss of continuity; 
J See Myers, op. cit. p. 233, on Clairvoyance of the Dying. 



IS THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE? 1 29 

rather they look as if a keen intelligence were 
still there, well aware of its earth-life, but drawn 
onward by an inevitable force, and passing into a 
new phase, of swifter subtler activity in perhaps 
a more ethereal body. 

That the human soul does pass through great 
transformations — moultings and sloughings and 
metamorphoses — and so forward from one stage 
to another, we know from the facts of life. 
Physiologically the body takes on a new phase at 
birth, and another at weaning and teething, and 
another at puberty, and another in age at the 
'change of life/ and so on; and transformations 
of the soul or inner life (some of them very re- 
markable) are associated with these outer phases. 
The last great bodily change is obviously accom- 
panied — as we have just indicated — by the de- 
velopment or extension of hidden psychic powers. 
What exactly that final transformation may be, 
we can only at present speculate; but we can see 
that, like the others, when it arrives it has already 
become very necessary and inevitable. At every 
such former stage — whether it be birth, or teeth- 
ing, or puberty, or what not — there has been 
constriction or strangulation. The growing inner 
life has found its conditions too limited for it, 
and has burst forth into new form and utterance. 
In this final change the bodily conditions alto- 
gether seem to have grown too limited. With 
an irresistible impulse and an agonizing joy of 
liberation the soul sweeps out, or is fearfully 
swept, into its new sphere. Sometimes doubtless 



130 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

the passage is one of pain and terror; far more 
often, and in the great majority of cases, it is 
peaceful and calm, with a deep sense of relief; 
occasionally it is radiant with ecstasy, as if the 
new life already cast its splendor in advance. 1 

Yes, we cannot withhold the belief that there 
is an after-death state — a state which in a sense 
is present with us, and has been present, all our 
lives; but which — for reasons that at present we 
can only vaguely apprehend — has been folded 
from our consciousness. 



1 Even on the battlefield, after the battle, faces of the dead 
have been observed with this expression upon them. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE UNDERLYING SELF 

Allowing, then, the great probability of the ex- 
istence of an after-death state, and of a survival 
of some kind, the question further arises : Is that 
survival in any sense personal or individual? or 
does it belong to some, so to speak, formless 
region, either below or above personality? It is 
conceivable of course that there may be survival 
of the outer and beggarly elements of the mind, 
below personality; or it is conceivable that the 
deepest and most central core of the man may 
survive, far beyond and above personality; but in 
either case the individual existence may not con- 
tinue. The eternity of the All-soul or Self of 
the universe is, I take it, a basic fact; it is from 
a certain point of view obvious; we have already 
discussed it, and, as far as this book is concerned, 
it is treated so much as an axiom that to argue 
further without it would be useless. That being 
granted, it follows that if the soul of each human 
being roots down ultimately into that All-self, 
the core of each soul must partake of the eternal 
nature. But as far as it does so it may be beyond 
all reach or remembrance or recognition of per- 
sonality. 

131 



I32 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

Such a conclusion — whatever force of convic- 
tion may accompany it — is certainly not alto- 
gether satisfactory. I remember that once — in 
the course of conversation with a lady on this very 
subject — she remarked that though she thought 
there would be a future life she did not believe in 
the continuance of individuality. "What do you 
believe in, then?" said I. "Oh," she replied, 
"I think we shall be a sort of Happy Mass!" 
And I have always since remembered that ex- 
pression. 

But though the idea of a happy mass has its 
charms, it does not, as I say, quite satisfy either 
our feelings or our intelligence. There is a 
desire for something more, and there is a per- 
ception that Differentiation and Individuation 
represent a great law — a law so great as probably 
to extend even to the ultimate modes of Being. 
And though a vague generality of this kind 
cannot stand in the place of strict reasoning or 
observation, it may make us feel that personal 
survival is at any rate possible, and that a certain 
amount of speculation on the subject is legiti- 
mate. 

At the same time we have to bear in mind 
that the subject altogether is a very complex one, 
and that we have to move only slowly, if we 
want to move forward at all, and to avoid having 
to retrace our steps. We must not too serenely 
assume, for instance, that we at all know what we 
are! We have already (ch. v.) analyzed to some 
degree the constitution of the human being, and 



THE UNDERLYING SELF 1 33 

found it complicated enough in its successive 
planes of development. We have now to re- 
member that — at least on the two middle planes, 
those of the human soul and the animal soul — 
there is another subdivision to be made, namely 
between that part which is conscious and that 
which is only subconscious; so that further com- 
plications inevitably arise. We may not only 
have to consider, as in the chapter referred to, 
which of these planes may possibly carry survival 
with it, but again whether such survival may be 
in the conscious region, or only in the subliminal 
or subconscious. This chapter will be largely oc- 
cupied with a consideration of the subliminal or 
underlying portion of the self, and it will be 
seen that that is probably of immense extent and 
variety of content compared with the surface or 
conscious portion; but it will also be seen that 
there is no strict line of demarcation between the 
two, and that a continual interchange betwixt 
them is taking place, so that for the present 
at any rate it is safest to give the word 'self 
its widest scope and make it include both portions 
and every mental faculty, rather than limit its 
application. 

In attacking the subject, then, of the Survival 
of the Self, I suppose our first question ought 
to be: What is the test of survival, what do 
we mean by it? And to this, I imagine, the 
answer is, Continuity of Consciousness. This 
would seem to be the only satisfying definition. 



134 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

Consciousness is necessary in some form or other, 
as the base and evidence of our existence; and 
continuity in some degree is also necessary, in 
order to link our experiences together, as it were 
into one chain. Continuity, however, need not 
be absolute. The chain of consciousness may 
apparently be broken by sleep, or it may be 
broken by a dose of chloroform, or by a blow 
on the head; but it may be re-knit and resumed. 
It may pass from the supraliminal state to the 
subliminal, and again emerge on the surface. 
It may even be discontinuous ; but as long as 
Memory bridges the intervals we get the sense of 
continuity of life or personality. 1 Supposing a 
body of memories — of life say in some village 
of ancient Egypt — suddenly opened up in one's 
mind, as vivid and consistent and enduring as 
one's ordinary memory of childhood days, it 
would be natural to conclude that one really had 
pre-existed in that village; it would be difficult 
not to make that inference. And similarly if 
at some future time, and in far other than our 
present surroundings, the memory of this one's 
earth-life should emerge again, vivid and personal 
as now, the being thus having that memory would, 



1 It is, of course, quite possible that our ordinary conscious- 
ness is discontinuous, even down to its minutest elements, and 
that it is only made up of successive and separate sensations 
which, as in a cinematograph, follow each with lightning 
speed. But even this almost compels us to the assumption of 
another and profounder and more continuous consciousness 
beneath, which is the means of the synthesis and comparison 
of these sensations. 



THE UNDERLYING SELF 135 

we suppose, conclude that he had once lived this 
life here on earth. 

Thus Memory would be the arbiter of survival 
and of the continuity (on the whole) of con- 
sciousness. Frederick Myers, indeed, goes so 
far as to define consciousness as that which is 
"potentially memorable" * — thus suggesting that 
memory is a necessary accompaniment of any 
psychic state to which we can venture to give the 
name of consciousness. 

It may indeed seem precarious to rest our test 
of survival on so notoriously fallible, and even at 
times fallacious, a thing as Memory; but one 
does not see that there is anything better, or that 
there is any alternative ! The memory may not 
be continuously enduring and operative; but if 
at any future time one should be persuaded of 
having survived from this present life, it must, 
one would say, be by memory in some form or 
other, of this present life. And it must be re- 
marked that though memory is fitful and fallible, 
these epithets apply mainly to the supraliminal 
memory, to that superficial memory which we 
make use of by conscious effort, and which 
often fails us in the moment of need. Deep 
below this we dimly perceive, and daily are 
becoming more persuaded of, the existence of 
vast and permanent but latent stores, which from 
time to time emerge into manifestation; and 
more and more our psychologists are inclining 
to think that the supraliminal self gains its 

1 Human Personality, op. cit. p. 29. 



I36 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

memories by tapping these stores, and that its 
lapses and oblivions are more due to failure in 
the tapping process than to any failure of the 
memory stores themselves. Indeed not a few psy- 
chologists are now asking whether it is not likely 
that every psychic experience carries memory with 
it, and so is preserved in the great storehouse. 

I have already, in the last chapter, spoken of 
the so-called subliminal self as, among other 
things, a wonderful storehouse of memory; and I 
propose now to occupy a few pages with the more 
detailed consideration of the nature of. that self; 
because, as we are discussing the question of sur- 
vival, our discussion, as I have just said, ought 
obviously to include the under as well as the 
upper strata of consciousness. We cannot very 
well confine our meaning and our inquiry to the 
little brain-self only, and leave out of considera- 
tion the great self of the emotions and impulses 
— of genius, love, enthusiasm, and so forth. 1 No, 
we must include both — the more intimate, though 
more hidden, self, as well as the self of the 
fagade and the front window. 

This hidden self is indeed an astounding thing, 
whose extent and complexity grows upon us as 
investigation proceeds. For when the term 
'subliminal' was first used it had apparently a 
fairly simple connotation — as of some one obscure 
and unexplored chamber of the mind; but now 
instead of a single chamber it would seem rather 
some vast house or palace at whose door we 

1 See The Art of Creation, pp. 105-8. 



THE UNDERLYING SELF 1 37 

stand, with many chambers and corridors — some 
dark and underground, some spacious and well 
lighted and furnished, some lofty with extensive 
outlook and open to the sky; and the modern 
psychologists are puzzling themselves to find 
suitable names for all these new domains — which 
indeed they cannot satisfactorily do, seeing they 
know so little of their geography! 

I can only attempt here — very roughly I am 
afraid, and unsystematically — to point out some 
of the properties and qualities of the underlying 
or hidden or subconscious self — whichever term 
we may like to use. In the first place, its memory 
appears to be little short of perfect, and at any 
rate to our ordinary intelligence and estimate, 
nothing short of marvellous. When a servant 
girl, who can neither read nor write, reproduces, 
in her wandering speech during a nervous fever, 
whole sentences of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, 
which she could not possibly understand, and 
which had only fallen quite casually on her ears 
years before from the lips of an old scholar (who 
used to recite passages to himself as he walked 
up and down a room adjoining the kitchen in 
which the girl at that time worked 1 ) ; we per- 
ceive that the under or latent memory may catch 
and retain for a lengthy period, and with strange 
accuracy, the most fleeting and apparently super- 



1 This well-known case, given by Coleridge in his Biographia 
Literaria, is amply confirmed by scores of similar cases which 
have been carefully examined into and described by modern 
research. 



138 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

ficial impressions. When Dr. Milne Bramwell in- 
structs a hypnotized subject to make a cross on a 
bit of paper exactly 20,180 minutes after the giv- 
ing of the order; and the patient, having of course 
emerged from the hypnotic sleep, and gone about 
her daily work, and having no conscious re- 
membrance of the command, does nevertheless 
at the expiration of the stated number of days 
and minutes take a piece of paper and make 
the said cross upon it, 1 we can only , marvel 
both at the persistence and accuracy of mem- 
ory which the subliminal being displays, and 
at the strict command which this being may ex- 
ercise in its silent way over the actions of the 
supraliminal self. When we are repeatedly told 
that in the moment of drowning, people remem- 
ber every action and event of their past life, 
though we may doubt the exact force of the word 
'every,' we cannot but be convinced that an 
enormous and astounding resurgence of memory 
does take place, 2 and we cannot but suspect that 
the memorization is somehow on a different plane 
of consciousness from the usual one, being simul- 
taneous and in mass instead of linear and suc- 
cessive. Or when, again, a 'calculating boy' or 
prodigy of quite tender years on being asked to 
find the cube-root of 31,855,013 instantly says 
317, or being given the number 17,861 immedi- 



*See Proceedings S.P.B. vol. xii, pp. 176-203; quoted by- 
Frederick Myers, Human Personality, ch. v. 

2 This is contested by H. Ellis in his World of Dreams, p. 
215, but not very successfully, I think. 



THE UNDERLYING SELF I39 

ately remarks that it consists of the factors 
337 X 53/ we are reduced to the alternative 
suppositions, either that the boy's subconscious 
self works out these sums with a perfectly amaz- 
ing rapidity, or that it has access to stores of 
memory and knowledge quite beyond the experi- 
ence of the life-time concerned. In all these 
cases, and hundreds and thousands of others 
which have been observed, the memory of the 
subliminal self — whether manifested through 
hypnotism, or in sleep or dreams, or in other 
ways — seems to exceed in range and richness, as 
well as in rapidity, the memory of the supra- 
liminal self; and indeed Myers goes so far as to 
say that the deeper down one penetrates below 
the supraliminal, the more perfect is the remem- 
brance : that, in cases where one can reach 
various planes of memory in the same subject, 
"it is the memory furthest from waking life 
whose span is the widest, whose grasp of the 
organism's upstored impressions is the most 
profound." 2 This is, I think, a very important 
conclusion, and one to which we may recur 
later. 

1 See Myers, op. cit. ch. iii. p. 66 ; also T. J. Hudson's 
interesting account of Zerah Colburn, in Psychic Phenomena 
(1893), p. 64. 

2 Op. cit. p. 100. De Quincey, it will be remembered, in a 
well-known passage of his Confessions, says: "Of this at least 
I feel assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting pos- 
sible to the mind; a thousand accidents may and will inter- 
pose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret 
inscriptions on the mind; accidents of the same sort will also 
rend away this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the 
inscription remains forever." 



140 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

But the hidden being within us does not show 
this extraordinary command of mental processes 
merely in technical matters. Its powers extend 
far deeper, into such regions as those of Genius 
and Prophecy. The wonderful flashes of intui- 
tion, the complex combinations of ideas, which 
at times leap fully formed and with a kind of 
authority into the field of man's waking con- 
sciousness, obviously proceed from a deep intel- 
ligence of some kind, lying below, and are the 
product of an immensely extended and rapid sur- 
vey of things, brought to a sudden focus. They 
yield us the finest flowers of Art; and some at any 
rate of the most remarkable instances of Pre- 
diction. For though there may be — and probably 
is — a purely clairvoyant prophetic gift, freed as 
it were from the obscuration of Time, yet it can- 
not be doubted that much or most of prophecy 
is simply very swift and conclusive inference de- 
rived from very extensive observation. 

These flashes and inspirations are clearly not 
the product of the conscious brain; they are felt 
by the latter to come from beyond it. They are, 
in the language of Myers, "uprushes from the 
subliminal self." And even beyond them there 
are things which come from the same source- — 
there are splendid enthusiasms, and overwhelming 
impulses of self-sacrifice, as well as mad and 
daemonic passions. 

Yet again, it is not merely command of mental 
processes that the subconscious being displays, but 
of the bodily powers and processes too. Intelli- 



THE UNDERLYING SELF 1 4 1 

gent itself to the marvellous degrees already indi- 
cated, it is evident also that its intelligence pene- 
trates and ordains the whole body. Every one 
has heard of the stigmata of the Crucifixion ap- 
pearing on the hands and feet of some religious 
devotee, as in the celebrated case of Louise La- 
teau. Dr. Briggs of Lima once told a hypnotized 
patient that u a red cross would appear on her 
chest every Friday during a period of four 
months" — and obediently the mark appeared. 1 
A whisper in such cases is often sufficient; and the 
latent power swiftly but effectually modifies all the 
complex activities and functions of the organism 
to produce the desired result. What an extraor- 
dinary combination of elaborate intelligence and 
detailed organizing power must here be at work! 
And the same in the quite common yet very re- 
markable cases of mental healing, with which we 
are all now familiar! 

Sometimes again — quite apart from any oral 
suggestion or apparent outside influence — we find 
the subjective being taking most decisive command 
of a person's faculties and actions. This happens, 
for instance, in somnambulism, when the sleep- 
walker perhaps passes along the narrow and peril- 
ous ridge of a roof or wall with perfect balance 
and sureness of foot — adjusting a hundred 
muscles in the most delicate way, and yet with 
total unconsciousness as far as the supraliminal 
self is concerned. Or it happens sometimes — even 

*See Journal S.P.R., vol. iii. p. 100; also T. J. Hudson, 
op. cit.y p. 153. 



142 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

more remarkably — to people in full possession of 
their waking faculties, at some moment when ex- 
treme danger threatens to overwhelm them. 
John Muir in his The Mountains of California, 1 
describes how when scaling the very precipitous 
face of a cliff he found himself completely baffled, 
at a great height from the ground, and unable to 
proceed either up or down. He was seized with 
panic and a trembling in every limb, and was on 
the point of falling, when suddenly a perfect calm 
and assurance took possession of him, and some- 
how — he never quite knew how — with an aston- 
ishing agility and sure-footedness he completed 
the ascent, and was saved. "I seemed suddenly to 
become possessed of a new sense. The other Self 
— bygone experiences, Instinct or Guardian Angel, 
call it what you will — came forward and assumed 
control. My trembling muscles became firm 
again, every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as 
through a microscope, and my limbs moved with 
a positiveness and precision with which I seemed 
to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne 
aloft upon wings, my deliverance could not have 
been more complete." 

Maeterlinck, in his chapter on "The Psychology 
of Accident" (in Life and Flowers), describes 
how in the nerve-commotion of danger, Instinct, 
"a rugged, brutal, naked, muscular figure," rushes 
to the rescue. "With a glance that is surer and 
swifter than the onrush of the peril, it takes in 
the situation, then and there unravels all its de- 

x New York, 1903, p. 64. 



THE UNDERLYING SELF 1 43 

tails, issues and possibilities, and in a trice affords 
a magnificent, an unforgettable spectacle of 
strength, courage, precision, and will, in which 
unconquered life flies at the throat of death." 
And similar instances — of instinctive presence of 
mind, and an almost miraculous development of 
faculty in extreme danger — are within the knowl- 
edge of most people. The subliminal being steps 
in quite decisively, and the ordinary conscious 
nr d feels that another power is taking over the 
r< is. 

But there is another faculty of the subjacent 
self which must not be passed over, and which 
is very important — I mean the image-forming 
power. This is one of the prime faculties of all 
intelligent beings, lying at the very root of cre- 
ation; and it is a faculty possessed to an extreme 
and impressive degree by the self "behind the 
scenes." I have discussed this subject generally 
at some length in my book The Art of Creation, 
and need not repeat the matter here, except to 
allude to a few points. The image-forming 
faculty is a natural attribute of the conscious 
mind, in all perhaps but the lowest grades 
of evolution; at any rate it is difficult to think 
of a mind at all like ours without this faculty. 
This faculty is most active when the mind is 
withdrawn into itself, in quietude. In his study 
or when burning the midnight oil the writer's 
brain teems, or is supposed to teem, with images! 
But in sleep the image-forming activity is even 
greater. It then shows itself in the subconscious 



144 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

mind, in the world of dreams, whose bodiless 
creations are more vivid and energetic than those 
of our waking hours, and have a strange sense 
of reality about them. But again, in the deeper 
sleep of trance still more vivid images are pro- 
duced. A young student hypnotized imagines 
himself to be Napoleon, then to be Garibaldi, then 
to be an old woman of ninety, then to be a mere 
child. He acts the parts of these characters, imi- 
tates their handwriting, their voices, issues procla- 
mations to his soldiers in the name of the first 
two, assumes the shaky penmanship of childhood 
and of old age; and all in the course of half-an- 
hour or so. 1 The images thus formed in the deep 
trance of the young man are so vivid, so power- 
ful, so dramatic, that they take possession of the 
organism and compel it to become the means of 
their manifestation. In mediumistic trance the 
same thing happens. There may be suggestion 
from outside, or there may not, but in the depth 
of the medium's mind images are formed which 
speak and act through the entranced person, 
making use in doing so of the marvellous stores 
of memory and knowledge which the inner mind 
has at command, and sorely puzzling the spec- 
tators at times, as to whether the performance 
is merely histrionic or whether by chance it in- 
dicates a bona fide communication from the 
dead. 2 

1 See Lombroso, Fenomeni iimotici e spiritici, Turin, 1909, 
pp. 28-31. 

2 1 leave the question of the possibility of the latter open for 
the present. See Note at end of this chapter. 



THE UNDERLYING SELF 145 

This energetic dramatic quality of the image- 
forming faculty is tremendously important. It 
has not been enough insisted upon; and it has 
been greatly misunderstood and misrepresented. 
It is, as I say, a root-property of creation. It is 
seen everywhere in the healthy activity of the hu- 
man mind, in its delight in romance and imagina- 
tion, in the play of children, the stage, literature, 
art, scientific invention — the sheer joy of creation, 
going on everywhere and always. Lay the con- 
scious and controlling and selective power of the 
upper mind at rest, in the trance-condition, and 
you have in the deeps of the subliminal self this 
primal creative power exposed. Offer to it the 
lightest suggestion, and there springs forth from 
that abyss a figure corresponding, or a dozen 
figures, or a whole procession! The mere delight 
of creation calls them forth. Could anything be 
more wonderful? What a strange glimpse it 
gives us of the possibilities of Creation. 

Some people seem to be quite shocked at the 
idea that this subliminal mind, or whatever it is 
that possesses these marvellous powers, should 
act these parts, and lend itself to unsubstantial 
and quasi-fraudulent representations. But why 
accuse of deception? It is a game — the great 
game we are all of us playing — the whole Crea- 
tion romancing away; with endless inexhaustible 
fertility throwing out images, ideas, new shapes 
and forms forever. Those forms which hold their 
own, which substantiate themselves, which fill a 
place, fulfil a need — they win their way into the 



146 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

actual world and become the originals of the 
plants, the animals, human beings, works of art, 
and so forth, which we know. Those which can- 
not hold their own pass back again into the un- 
seen. In the far depths of the entranced 
medium's mind we see this abysmal process going 
on — this fountain-like production of images taking 
place — the very beginnings of creation. It is the 
sheer joy of manifestation. As one gives a mu- 
sician a mere hint or clue — a theme of three or 
four notes — and immediately he improvises a 
spirited piece of music; so is it with the hypno- 
tized person or with the medium. One gives him 
a suggestion and he immediately creates the fig- 
ures according. And so it is for us, to direct this 
wonderful power, even in ourselves — not to call it 
fraudulent, but to make use of it for splendid ends. 
Doubtless it can be used for unworthy ends. 
It is easy to understand that the mediumistic per- 
son, finding this wonderful dramatic and creative 
faculty within himself or herself, is sometimes 
tempted to turn it to personal advantage; and 
succumbs to the temptation. The dramatic habit 
catches hold of the waking self, and renders the 
person tricky and unreliable. 1 But below it all is 
creation, and the instinct of creation — the power 
that gives to airy nothing a local habitation, the 

1 This was no doubt, for instance, the case with Eusapia 
Paladino — as admitted by her warmest supporters. But it 
does not contravene the fact, proved by most abundant evi- 
dence and experiment, of the astounding physical phenomena 
which from her early childhood accompanied her, and in some 
strange way exhaled from her. 



THE UNDERLYING SELF 1 47 

genius of the dramatist, of the artist, of the in- 
ventor, and the very source of the visible and 
tangible world. 

For from the Under-self — as exposed in the 
state of trance, or in extreme languor and ex- 
haustion of the body, or in the moment of death, 
or in dreams, or even in profound reverie — 
proceed (strange as it may seem) Voices and 
Visions and Forms, things audible and visible 
and tangible, things anyhow which are compe- 
tent to impress the senses of spectators so vividly 
as to be for the moment indistinguishable from 
the phenomena, audible, visible and tangible, of 
our actual world. Amazing as are the mate- 
rializations connected with mediums — the figures 
which appear, which speak, which touch and are 
touched, the faces, the supernumerary feet and 
hands, the sounds, the lights, the movements of 
objects — all in some way connected with the 
medium's presence — these phenomena are now 
far too well established and confirmed by care- 
ful and scientific observation to admit (in the 
mass) of any reasonable doubt. 1 And similarly 
with the wraiths, or phantoms which are pro- 



1 It is impossible, for instance, to read slowly and in detail 
such works as A. R. Wallace's Miracles and Modern Spirit- 
ualism, William Crookes' Researches into Spiritualism, C. 
Lombroso's Fenomeni ipnotici e spiritici, and to note the 
care and exactness with which in each case experiments 
were conducted, tests devised, and results recorded, without 
being persuaded that in the mass the conclusions (confirmed in 
the first two instances by the authors themselves after an 
interval of twenty or thirty years) are correct. Already a 
long list of scientific and responsible men, like Charles Richet 



148 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

jected from dying or lately dead persons, the evi- 
dence for them in general is much too abundant 
and well attested to allow of disbelief. 1 What 
an extraordinary story, for instance, is that given 
by Sir Oliver Lodge in his Survival of Man 
(p. 10 1 ) — of a workman who having drunk 
poison by mistake, appeared in the moment of 
death, with blue and blotched face to his em- 
ployer, to whom he was greatly attached, and told 
him not to be deceived by the rumor that he 
(the workman) had committed suicide! Yet the 
story is fully and authoritatively given in the 
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 
vol. iii. p. 97, and cannot well be set aside. But 
if such things happen in the hour of death, 
so do they also happen in the dream-state. 2 
The dreamer has a vivid dream of visiting 
a certain person, and is accordingly and at 
that time, seen by that person. And in the 
state of reverie the same. It is at times suf- 

(professor of physiology at Paris), Camille Flammarion (the 
well-known astronomer), Professor Zollner of the Observatory 
at Leipzig, C. F. Varley the electrician, Sir Oliver Lodge of 
Birmingham, have made important contributions to the evi- 
dence; while others, like Professor De Morgan the mathema- 
tician, Professor Challis the astronomer, Sergeant Cox the 
lawyer, and Professor William James the psychologist, have 
signified their general adhesion. 

1 For references see supra, ch. vi. p. 92, footnote. 

2 See Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. p. 289, also the ex- 
perience of Mrs. A., given in Footfalls on the Boundary of 
Another World, by R. Dale Owen, 1881, p. 256 et seq. This 
latter book, which is a mine of well-authenticated information, 
has suffered somewhat from its rather sensational title. The 
author, however, was an able, distinguished, and reliable man, 
son of Robert Owen of Lanark, Member of Congress in the 
United States, and U. S. Minister at Naples. 



THE UNDERLYING SELF 1 49 

ficient to think profoundly of any one, or to 
let one's inner self go out toward that person 
in order to cause an image of oneself to be seen 
by him. 

It will of course be said, and often is said, 
that those phenomena are only hallucinations, 
and have no objective existence. But the suffi- 
cient answer to that is that the things also of our 
actual world are hallucinations in their degree, 
and certainly have no full objective existence. 
The daffodil in my garden is an hallucination in 
that degree that with the smallest transposition 
of my senses, its color, its scent, and even its 
form might be quite altered. What we call its 
objectivity rests on the permanence of its rela- 
tions — on its continued appearance in one spot, 
its visibility to different people at one time, or 
to one person at different times, and so forth. 
But if that is the definition of objectivity, 
it is obvious that the forms which have been 
seen over and over again, and under strict 
test-conditions, in connection with certain 
mediums, have had in their degree an objective 
existence. 

In America, in connection with Kate Fox (one 
of the earliest and most spontaneous and natural 
of modern mediums), a certain Mr. Livermore 
— a thoroughly capable business man of 
New York — came into communication as it 
seemed with his deceased wife. She appeared 
to him — not in one house only, but in several 
houses — over and over again; sometimes only 



150 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

the head, sometimes the whole figure; her ap- 
pearance was accompanied by inexplicable sounds 
and lights; she communicated sometimes by- 
raps, sometimes by visibly writing on blank cards 
brought for the purpose; and these phenomena 
extended over a period of six years and 388 
recorded sittings, and at many of the sit- 
tings were corroborated by independent wit- 
nesses. 1 It is difficult to imagine hallucinations 
or deceit maintained under such circum- 
stances. 

In England (in connection with the medium 
Florence Cook) the figure "Katie King" ap- 
peared to Sir William Crookes a great number of 
times during three years (1881-84) and was 
studied by him and Mr. C. F. Varley, F.R.S., with 
the greatest scientific care. Her apparition often 
spoke to those present, was touched by, and 
touched them, wrote, or played with the children. 
It often came outside the cabinet, and three times 
was seen by those present simultaneously with, 
and by the side of, the entranced medium. The 
figure was taller than the medium and different in 
feature; Crookes observed its pulse and found it 
making 75 beats a minute to the medium's 90, 
and so forth. 2 

Professor Richet, the French scientist, exam- 

x See R. Dale Owen, The Debatable Land (1871), pp. 385- 
400. 

2 See Crookes' Researches in Spiritualism, pp. 104 et seq. 
See also the book Neio Light on Immortality, by Fournier 
d'Albe, pp. 218 et seq., where the evidence is given in great 
detail. 



THE UNDERLYING SELF 151 

ined with great care the phantasm "Beni Boa," 
which appeared to him some twenty times in con- 
nection with the Algerian medium Aisha; he ob- 
tained several photographs of it, and observed its 
pulse, its respiration, and so forth. 1 Lombroso, 
the author of many scientific works, and a man 
who to begin with was a complete sceptic on these 
matters, assures us that at the sittings of Eusapia 
Paladino he saw his own mother (long dead) 
a great number of times, and that she repeatedly 
kissed him. 2 In connection with Mme. D'Espe- 
rance 3 the girlish figure of u Yolanda" appeared 
and disappeared very frequently during a period 
of ten years, and was well known to frequenters 
of her circle; and in 1896 a committee formed 
by some twenty-five high officials and well-known 
persons in Norway publicly attested the repeated 
appearance at her seances of a very beautiful 
female figure who glided among the sitters, 
grasped their hands, gave them messages, and 
so forth, and disappeared before their eyes in 
a misty cloud. 4 Such evidence of the objectivity 
of seance figures could be rather indefinitely 
multiplied. But the same may be said, though 
perhaps less conclusively, of various ghosts and 
other manifestations, whose relations to certain 
persons or places or houses seem quite definite 

1 See Phenomdnes de la Ville Carmen, avec documents 
nouveaux; Paris, 1902. 

2 C. Lombroso, Fenomeni ipnotici a spiritici, p. 193. 
8 See Shadow-land (1906). 

4 See pamphlet Materializations, by Mme. D'Esptrance 
{Light Publishing Co.). 



152 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

and well established — and not unfrequently 
steadily recurrent under the same conditions. 

Without going into the vexed question of 
whether these and the like manifestations are 
merely products or inventions of the trance-mind 
of the medium or other person concerned, or 
whether some at least of them are the work or 
evidence of separate 'spirits' — leaving that ques- 
tion open for the present — we may still say that 
all these things are actual creations — creations 
of the hidden self of Man in some form or other; 
not so assured, certainly, and not so permanent as 
the well-known shapes of outer Nature; abortive 
creations, if you like, which come a little way for- 
ward into manifestation, and then retreat again; 
but still creations in the same sense as those more 
established ones; and wonderfully revealing to us 
the secret of the generation and birth of all the 
visible world. 

That we should have, all of us, this magic 
source somewhere buried within — this Aladdin's 
lamp, this vase of the Djinns, this Pandora box 
of evil as well as of good, is indeed astounding; 
and must cause us, when we have once fully 
realized the fact, to envisage life quite differently 
from what we have ever done before. It must 



1 See, for instance, the account of the haunted mill at Wil- 
lington, given at some length by Mr. W. T. Stead in the 
Review of Reviews for Jan., 1892; also the Memoirs of the 
Wesley Family, vol. i, pp. 253-60; and Whitehead's Lives of 
the Wesley s, vol. ii, pp. 120-66; also Footfalls, by R. Dale 
Owen* book iii, ch. ii. 



THE UNDERLYING SELF 1 53 

cause us to feel that our very ordinary and daily 
self — which we know so well (and which some- 
times we even get a little tired of) is only a frac- 
tion, only a flag and a signal, of that great Pres- 
ence which we really are, that great Mass-man 
who lies unexplored behind the very visible and 
actual. Difficult or impossible as this being may 
be to define, enormously complex as it probably 
is, and far-reaching, and hard to gauge, yet we see 
that it is there, undeniably there — a being that 
apparently includes far extremes of faculty and 
character, running parallel to the conscious self 
from low to high levels, 1 having in its range of 
manifestation the most primitive desires and pas- 
sions, and the highest feats of intellect and enthu- 
siasm; and while at times capable of accepting 
the most frivolous suggestions and of behaving 
in a humorous or merely capricious and irre- 
sponsible manner, at other times capable, as we 
have seen, of taking most serious command and 
control of the whole physical organism, and as 
far as the spiritual organism is concerned, of 
rising to the greatest heights of prophecy and 
inspiration. 2 



1 See Myers, op cit., p. 154. As many writers have remarked, 
the term "superconscious" might often be more applicable 
than "subconscious." 

2 With regard to this question of hypnotism and crime, 
T. J. Hudson says (Psychic Phenomena, p. 129) that it is al- 
most impossible to persuade a hypnotic to do what he firmly 
believes to be wrong. And Myers maintains that whatever the 
subliminal being may be, it is never malignant. "In dealing 
with automatic script, for instance, we shall have to wonder 
whence come the occasional vulgar jokes or silly mystifications. 



154 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

I say, then, that we must include in this problem 
of survival both the ordinary upper and conscious 
self and the deep-lying subjective and subconscious 
(or superconscious) being. Just as the organizing 
power of the Body includes the Cerebro-spinal 
system of nerves on the one hand, and the Great- 
Sympathetic system on the other, so the organism 
of the soul includes the supraliminal and sub- 
liminal portions. The two must be taken to- 
gether, and either alone could only represent a 
fraction of the real person. The exact relation 
of these two selves to each other is a matter 
which can only become clear with long time and 
study of this difficult subject. It may be that 
the subliminal self is destined to become conscious 
in our ordinary sense of the word. It may be, 
on the other hand, that the conscious self is 
destined to rise into the much wider consciousness 
of the subjective being. There is a great deal 
to suggest that the supraliminal self is only the 
front as it were of the great wave of life; and 
that the brain consciousness is only a very special 
instrument for dealing with the surroundings and 
conditions of our terrestrial existence — an instru- 
ment which will surrender much of its value at 



We shall discuss whether they are a kind of dream of the 
automatist's own, or whether they indicate the existence of 
unembodied intelligences on the level of the dog or the ape. 
But, on the other hand, all that world-old conception of 
Evil Spirits, of malevolent powers, which has been the basis 
of so much of actual devil-worship and so much more of vague 
supernatural fear — all this insensibly melts from the mind 
as we study the evidence before us." (Op. eit., p. 252.) 



THE UNDERLYING SELF 155 

death and on mergence with the larger and dif- 
ferently constituted consciousness which under- 
runs and sustains it. That the two selves are 
in constant communication with each other, and 
that they are both intelligent in some sense, is 
obvious from the facts of suggestion, by which 
often the lightest whisper so to speak from the 
upper is understood and attended to by the under 
self; while; on the other hand, the under-self com- 
municates with the upper, sometimes by inner 
Voices heard and Visions seen, sometimes by auto- 
matic actions, as in dream- or trance-writing, 
sometimes even by Sounds and Apparitions so 
powerful as to appear at least external. 

So we cannot but think that the question of sur- 
vival may ultimately resolve itself very much into 
the question of the more complete and effectual 
understanding between these different portions of 
the self. When they come into clear relation with 
each other, when the unit-man and the Mass- 
man merge into a perfect understanding and 
harmony, when they both become conscious of 
their affiliation to the great Self of the uni- 
verse, then the problem will be solved — or we 
may perhaps say, the problem will cease to 
exist. 



,156 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

NOTE TO CHAPTER VIII 
ON TRANCE-PHENOMENA 

It may seem rash or unbalanced to dwell, in the 
preceding chapters, on trance and mediumistic phenomena 
as much as I have done, considering that they are in 
some sense abnormal — that is, they are unusual, and 
comparatively few people have an opportunity of verify- 
ing them; also they may (it is said) be abnormal in 
the sense of being the products of conditions so special 
or even so morbid that conclusions drawn from them 
can have no general importance or value. 

There is a certain fashion in such matters, and with 
large sections of the public and during a long period it 
has no doubt been the habit simply to dismiss all con- 
sideration of this subject, as for one reason or another 
unadvisable. But now these phenomena in general (or 
enough of them to constitute a solid body of observation) 
are so thoroughly corroborated that it would be mere 
affectation to pass them by; and the best science now- 
adays refuses to ignore exceptional happenings on account 
of their exceptionality — recognizing that these very hap- 
penings often afford the key to the explanation of more 
common events. 

The phenomena connected with mediums and seances 
have been so amazing and unexpected that they have 
often produced a kind of fear and dismay. The religious 
people have been terrified at the prospect of having to 
acknowledge miracles not connected with the Church; 
or of having to confess to the resurrection of John Smith 
as well as of Jesus Christ. The scientific folk (in many 
or most quarters) being always just on the point of 
completing their pet scheme of the universe — whatever 
it may happen to be at the time — have naturally been 
in no mood to admit new facts which would totally 



TRANCE-PHENOMENA 1 57 

disarrange their systems; and have, therefore, with a 
few brilliant exceptions, consistently closed their eyes 
or looked another way. And the general public, not' 
without reason, has feared to embark on a subject which 
might easily float it away from the dry land of practical 
life, into one knows not what sea of doubt or even 
delusion. 

But these difficulties attend at all times the introduc- 
tion of a new subject — or at least of one which is new 
to the generation concerned; and can of course not be 
allowed to interfere with the candid and impartial ex- 
amination of the subject, or with the assimilation, as 
far as feasible, of its message. It should certainly, I 
think, be admitted that there are dangers attending the 
new science — or rather attending the hasty and careless 
investigation of it — just as there are attending any other 
science. There is no doubt that the phenomena con- 
nected with it are so astounding that they in some 
cases unhinge people's minds, or at least for the time 
upset them; and what we have already said once or 
twice of the frequent bodily exhaustion of the Medium, 
not to mention the occasional exhaustion of the sitters, 
must convince us that the greatest care should be exer- 
cised in connection with trance-conditions, and that the 
whole subject should be studied with a view to discover- 
ing its proper and best handling. It is clear — whatever 
view is taken of the process — that a certain disintegra- 
tion of the organism, and even of the personality of the 
medium, is liable to occur, one portion of the organism 
acting in a manner and under influences foreign to an- 
other portion, and that such disintegration oft repeated 
or long continued may be liable to produce a permanent 
degeneration of physique or even possibly demoralization 
of character. If there is a danger in this direction — 
and the extent of the danger should certainly be gauged 
— equally certainly it ought to be minimized or averted 
by the proper conditions. On the other hand, while 
noting this danger, we should not leave out of mind that 



I58 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

some evidence points in the other direction — namely, to 
the favorable effects and influences of trance when 
rightly conducted. 1 We may also in this connection 
allude to the changed attitude of the general mind to-day 
toward Hypnotism — a subject allied to that which we 
are considering. Fifty years ago the word had a sinister 
sound, and hypnotism and mesmerism were thought to 
be inventions of the devil and agencies of all evil. To- 
day they are recognized as a great power for good, and 
in at least two hospitals (in France) as the main instru- 
ment of healing. Naturally, when people are ignorant 
of a subject, or only in the first stages of knowledge 
with regard to it, they mishandle and misunderstand it. 
It may well happen therefore that with better under- 
standing of mediumship and trance-conditions, some of 
their drawbacks or less favorable aspects may pass out 
of sight. 

Mediums and trance-phenomena — prophecy, second 
sight, speaking in strange tongues, the appearance of 
flames and lights, and of figures apparently from the dead 
— are things that have been known all down history, 
and recognized almost as a matter of course, both among 
quite primitive peoples like the Kaffirs, or the Aleuts or 
the Mongolians, or among the more cultured like the 
Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus, Chinese, and so forth. 
The Bible teems with references to wizards and "necro- 
mancers" (note the meaning of the word) ; and the story 
of the Witch of Endor gives us a penetrating glimpse 
into what was evidently a common practice of "consulta- 
tion." These phenomena have never been so common as 
to break up and disorganize the routine of ordinary life, 
yet they have always been there, and recognized, as on 
the fringe or borderland — in somewhat the same way 
as the knowledge or recognition of Death does not inter- 
fere with daily life or prevent us making engagements; 



1 See Mediumship, by James B. Tetlow (Keighley, 1910), 
price 6d. 



TRANCE-PHENOMENA 159 

though we know it may do so at any time. And beyond 
any direct uses that trance-communication and manifes- 
tations may have now, or may have had in the past (a 
matter on which no doubt there is a good deal of dif- 
ference of opinion), we may fairly suppose that as ex- 
amples of real things and of a real world lying just 
outside the sphere of our ordinary and actual experience 
they may be of immense value — both as delivering us 
from a cramped and petty belief that we have already 
fathomed the possibilities of the universe, and as giving 
us just a hint and a glimpse of directions in which we 
may fairly look for the future. That we should for the 
present be limited for the most part to a definite sphere 
of activity, or to a definite region of creation, seems only 
natural. "One world, please, at a time!" said Thoreau 
when on his deathbed he was plagued by some pious 
person about the future life; and if we in our daily 
life were entangled in the manifestations of two very 
different planes of existence it might be greatly baffling. 
At the same time, the occasional hint or message from 
another plane may be of the greatest help. 

Condensations and manifestations (as of beings from 
such other plane) may be abnormal at present. They 
may be rare, they may occur under unexpected and even 
unhealthy conditions, they may cause dislocations of 
mind and of morals, they may be confused and confus- 
ing. All these things we should indeed in some degree 
expect; and yet it may not follow that these objections 
will continue. It is quite possible that in the future they 
will disappear. As I have had occasion to say many 
times, every new movement or manifestation of human 
activity, when unfamiliar to people's minds, is sure to be 
misrepresented and misunderstood. It appears in humble 
guise, without backing or patronage, forcing its way to 
light in the most unlikely places, "to the Jews a stum- 
bling-block, to the Greeks foolishness," often distorted 
and out of shape owing to its very birth-struggles, and 
for the very same reason diffident at first and uncertain 



l6o THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

of its own mission. Possibly a time is coming when 
Mediumship, instead of being left over (as not un- 
frequently now) to quite ignorant and uncultured speci- 
mens of humanity, and being exercised in haphazard, 
careless fashion, or for monetary gain, or personal van- 
ity, will be looked upon as a sacred and responsible 
office, worthy of and requiring considerable preparation 
and instruction, demanding the respect of the public, 
yet thoroughly criticized, both in method and result, by 
intelligent examination and logic. Possibly a time is 
coming when messages and manifestations from another 
plane than that of our daily life will come to us under 
the most obviously healthy and sane conditions, and will 
be fully recognized as having value and even, in their 
way, authority. 

For the present — allowing (as I do) the absolute 
genuineness of a great body of "spiritualistic" phenom- 
ena — there still is (owing to various causes already in- 
dicated) considerable doubt as to who or what the mani- 
festing beings or forces are. I suppose the main theories 
on the subject may be gathered under the following 
heads : that the manifesting powers are ( I ) Images, 
more or less unconsciously projected from the Medium's 
own mind; or, in case of raps, and so forth, emissions of 
force from the medium's body; (2) that they are the 
same projected from the minds or bodies of other per- 
sons present; (3) that they are independent Beings, 
making use of the medium's or other person's organism 
for the purpose of expression; or (4) that there is a 
blending of these actions. 

I think everyone who has studied the matter practically 
admits the first explanation in some degree; most people 
perhaps allow the second and fourth; but a good many — 
though not all — exclude the third. With regard, how- 
ever, to this last theory (that there really are occasional 
messages or manifestations from the dead — or from "the 
other side") there certainly seems to be a very consid- 



TRANCE-PHENOMENA 1 6 1 

erable residuum of evidence which, though not absolutely 
conclusive, is favorable to it; and there certainly are a 
considerable number of eminent and responsible men — 
like Myers, Lodge, Lombroso, and others — who, though 
not dogmatic, profess themselves inclined to accept the 
theory, on the evidence so far available. For myself — 
having so little personal and direct experience in this 
field — I do not feel in a position to form a definite 
opinion, and am content to leave the evidence to accu- 
mulate. 



CHAPTER IX 

SURVIVAL OF THE SELF 

In the last chapter we pointed out that for any 
adequate understanding of the subject before us 
the self must be taken to include the more ob- 
scure and subconscious portion of the mind, as 
well as the specially conscious portion with which 
we are most familiar. There is a constant 
interaction and flow taking place between the 
two parts, and to draw a strict line dividing 
them would be impossible. Indeed it would 
rather appear that growth comes largely by their 
blending and throwing light on each other. We 
also brought forward some considerations to 
show the nature of the underlying or sub- 
conscious self — its immense extent, the swiftness 
of its perceptions, and so forth. If then, to con- 
tinue our argument, there should come a time (in 
death) when the outer and more obvious ego 
merges, or at least comes into closer relation, 
with the under-self, it would seem likely that 
the surviving consciousness would be greatly 
changed from its present form, and would take on 
something of the instantaneous wide-reaching 
character of what has been called the Cosmic 
Consciousness. And this is a conclusion much 

162 






SURVIVAL OF THE SELF 1 63 

to be expected, and surely also much to be 
desired. However one may envisage the matter, 
it hardly seems possible to imagine an after- 
death consciousness quite on the same plane as 
our present consciousness. (This, too — one may 
say in passing — probably explains the difficulty 
we experience in holding direct communication 
with the dead — the same sort of difficulty, in fact, 
that the outer mind during life has in directly 
reaching the inner mind.) Myers 1 speaks of our 
supraliminal life as merely a special phase of our 
whole personality, and suggests that there are 
good reasons for thinking that there is a rela- 
tion — "obscure but indisputable — between the 
subliminal and the surviving self." Under these 
circumstances it would seem natural to inquire 
what definite reasons there may be for 
thinking that the subliminal self survives; and 
I shall occupy this chapter largely with that 
question. 

( 1 ) In the first place, from the observed pro- 
cess of the generation and growth of the body 
from a microscopic origin, we have already 
argued (chapter vii.) the probability of the pre- 
existence in a sub-atomic or fourth-dimensional 
state of the being which is manifested in the body, 
and therefore the probability of the continuance 
of that being after the dissolution of the body. 
And this argument must include the Under- 
self, which is responsible for so much of the 
organization and growth and sustentation of the 

l Op eit., pp. 168-69. 



1 64 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

body, as well as the Upper; and may well 
lead us to infer that both upper and under selves 
continue after death — only conjoined in some 
way, and with some added experience gained dur- 
ing life. 

(2) In the second place, we are struck by the 
fact that continuous Memory — which we decided 
to be the very necessary condition of survival — is 
just the thing which is so strong in the subjective 
being and so characteristic of it. The huge stores 
of memory — and of quite personal and individual 
memory — which this being has at command, their 
long dormancy and their extraordinary resurgence 
at times when conditions call them forth, are a 
marvel to the investigator, and make us feel that 
it is hardly probable that they are all swept away 
at death. Even if dormant at the time of 
death, it seems not unlikely that here again 
later conditions may awake them once more to 
life. 

But (3), we have a great deal of evidence to 
show that, as a matter of fact, the underlying 
self is especially active at the moment of death. 
The whole phenomenon of 'wraiths' — now in the 
mass so amply proved 1 — the projection of phan- 
tasms sometimes to an immense distance, 2 by per- 
sons in articulo mortis — goes to show its intense 

1 See a long chapter on "Manifestations de Mourants" in 
C. Flammarion's L'Inconnu. 

2 As in the case of a man drowning in a storm off the 
island of Tristan d'Acunha, who was seen at the same hour 
in a Norfolk farmhouse. Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. 
p. 52. 



SURVIVAL OF THE SELF 1 65 

energy and vitality (if one may use the word) at 
that moment. And the vivid resurgences of mem- 
ory at the same moment (or in any hour of dan- 
ger) point in the same direction. T. J. Hudson, 
and others, insist that the subjective mind never 
sleeps — that whatever drowsiness, or faintness, or 
languor may overpower the upper or self- 
conscious mind, the under mind is still acutely 
awake and operant, and if this is (as it appears) 
true with regard to sleep, it may well also be so 
even with regard to death. 

Again (4), the Telaesthetic faculty of the 
under-self (I mean during life) — its power of 
clairvoyantly perceiving things and events at a 
distance, even in minutest details — is a very 
wonderful fact — a fact that is amply established, 
and one that must give us pause. Here are 
vision and perception at work without eyes or 
ears, or any of the usual bodily end-organs 1 — 
and acting in such a way as to suggest or practi- 
cally to prove that the soul has other channels 
or instruments of perception than those connected 
with the well-known outer body. Every one has 
heard of cases of this kind. They are common 
on the borderland of sleep, or in dreams, and — 
what especially appeals to us here — they are very 
common in the hour of death. If the soul (as 
is evidently the case) can perceive without the 
intermediation of mortal eye or ear; then — 
though we may conclude that these special organs 
have been fashioned or developed for special 

1 See further on this subject ch. 2d. infra, p. 211; 



1 66 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

terrene use — we may also conclude that, without 
them, it would still continue to exercise percep- 
tion, developing sight and hearing and other 
faculties along lines with which at present we are 
but slightly acquainted. These faculties spring 
inevitably deep down out of ourselves, and will 
recur again doubtless wherever we are. . . . 
"Were your eyes destroyed, still the faculty of 
sight were not destroyed; out of the same roots 
again as before would another optic apparatus 
spring." * 

And the same may be said, (5), about the tele- 
pathic faculty — that is, the power (not of per- 
ceiving, but) of sending impressions or messages 
to a distance. This power which the under-self 
has of communicating with the under-selves of 
other persons, and often at a great distance, is 
one of the best-established facts in the new 
psychology; and again, it is very pregnant with 
inference. It shows us the soul acting vividly 
along certain lines independent as far as we can 
see of the known body, certainly along lines in- 
dependent of the known organs of expression. 
It compels us to conclude a possible and even 
probable activity quite apart from that body. 
With this telepathic power, or as an extension of 
it, may be classed the image-projecting faculty, 
which we have already seen to be peculiarly 
active in death. And it may be appropriate here 
to notice that in quite a number of the cases of 
wraiths or phantasms projected (in forty cases 

1 Towards Democracy, p. 490. 



SURVIVAL OF THE SELF 1 67 

out of three hundred and sixteen as given by 
Edmund Gurney in Proceedings S.P.R. vol. v. 
p. 408) the apparition was seen after the death 
had occurred — though within twenty-four hours 
after. This may directly indicate an after-death 
activity of the person who projected the image, 
or it may merely indicate a relay of the telepathic 
impression on its way, or in the subconscious 
mind of the recipient, previous to emerging in 
the latter's conscious mind. 1 

All these things are strongly indicative. They 
do not give the impression that at death the 
underlying self is in the act of perishing. On 
the contrary, they point to its continuance, and 
if anything increased activity; while at the same 
time the strongly personal character of many of 
the phenomena referred to — the wonderfully dis- 
tinct personal memories, the very personal images 
or phantasms projected, the telepathic appeal to 
nearest and dearest friends — all suggest that the 
continuing activity does not merely tail off into 
an abstract life-force or vague stream of tendency, 
but is of a distinctly personal or individual char- 
acter. 

There is another consideration, (6), on which 
I may dwell for a moment here. The passion of 
Love, whether considered in its physical or in its 
psychical and emotional aspects, is notably 
a matter of the subjective or subliminal life. 
The little self-conscious, logical, argumentative 

*For a discussion of this question, see Myers, op. cit., ch. 
vii. on Phantasms of the Dead. 



1 68 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

personality is completely routed by this passion, 
which seems to spring from the great depths of 
being with Titanic force, full-armed in its own 
convictions, and overturning all established or- 
ders and conventions. It surely must give us a 
deep insight into the nature of that hidden self 
from which it springs. Yet nothing is more no- 
ticeable about the passion than its recklessness of 
mortal life — nothing more noticeable than its wil- 
lingness to sacrifice all worldly prospects and the 
body itself in the pursuit of its ends. Even the 
most physical love, as we have said already 
(chapter vi.), has a strange relation to Death, 
and often slays the very object of its desire: — 

"For each man kills the thing he loves, 
Though each man does not die." 

While the more emotional form of the passion 
almost rejoices in its contempt of life and its 
willingness to face dangers and death for the sake 
of the beloved. It says as plain as words: — "I 
can fulfil myself and my purposes all right, even 
without this mortal part which you hold so dear" ; 
and unless we think that the hidden being who 
thus speaks is a perfect fool, we must conclude 
that it is aware of a life surpassing that of the 
body. 

Such a continuing life we no doubt have evi- 
dence of, and indeed commonly admit to exist, in 
the Race-life; and as a first approximation it 
seems natural and obvious to interpret the under- 
lying or subliminal self as being simply the Race- 



SURVIVAL OF THE SELF 1 69 

self. In the case of the lower and less developed 
forms of creation, perhaps this is the wisest thing 
to do. In default of more detailed and perfect 
knowledge, we may easily assume that in a shoal 
of several million herrings or in a 'culture' of 
several billion microbes the underlying self of 
each particular herring or microbe is practically 
identical with the self of the race concerned. 
But in the case of man and some of the higher 
animals it is not so easy to do this. We find a 
strongly individual element in his subconscious 
mind, which must also be accounted for. I have 
already alluded to the stores of individual mem- 
ory which this mind retains, thus differentiating it 
from others; and I have alluded to the intensely 
individual phantasms which it projects. And now 
again we are brought face to face with the greatly 
individual character of its love-passion. How- 
ever much the love-passion may be symbolical 
of the life of the race, and deeply implicated in 
the same (and both of these it certainly is), still 
— except in its lower forms — there is nothing 
vague and general and undifferentiated about that 
passion; on the contrary, it is most strongly per- 
sonal and sharply outlined. Why is it that out 
of the hundred thousand people that a man may 
meet only one will arouse this tremendous re- 
sponse? Why is it that every great love in its 
depth seems different from every other? Do 
not these things suggest a profound difference 
of outline in the subconscious beings them- 
selves from whom these loves proceed? These 



170 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

beings are manifestations and organic expres- 
sions of the Race — yes. But they are also 
deeply individual and different — each one from 
the other. 

And here we seem to come upon the first 
emergence of the solution of the problem before 
us. The self of which we are in search has — 
especially through its subconscious part — a vast 
continuing life, affiliated to the life of the race 
and beyond that to the cosmic life of the All; 
but it also has a strongly individual outline and 
character. Nursed in the womb of the Race 
during countless ages, like a babe within its 
mother, passing through numberless reincarna- 
tions in a kind of collective way, and in more or 
less unconsciousness of its supreme and separate 
destiny, it at last in Man attains to the clear sense 
of individuality, and (through much suffering) is 
set free to an independent existence; being finally 
exhaled from earth-mortality into a cosmic life 
under other conditions of space and time than 
ours. 

Difficult as this conception of a continued 
individual existence may be to hold to in 
view of the terrible and external flux of general 
Nature, and difficult as it may be to under- 
stand in all detail ; yet, as I say, it is Love which 
compels us to the insight of its truth. It is Love 
which has the clear conception of the unique- 
ness of the beloved, it is love which positively 
refuses to believe in her (or his) annihilation, 
it is love alone which in the hour of loss can 



SURVIVAL OF THE SELF 171 

face the awful midnight sky, and dare to 
sing : — 

"Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace, 
Sleep, holy Spirit, blessed soul! 
While the stars burn, the moons increase, 
And the great ages onward roll." 

And it is in the meeting of lovers that the heavens 
open, allowing them to see — if only for a moment 
— the eternities to which they both belong. 

There are no doubt other considerations — I 
mean those connected with mediumistic and so- 
called spiritualistic phenomena — which point to- 
ward the conclusion of an individual survival of 
some kind after death; but although this kind of 
evidence is likely to prove in the end of im- 
mense value, it is possible that the time has not 
yet quite come when it can be completely sub- 
stantiated, tabulated, and effectively utilized; at 
any rate I do not feel myself in a position to so 
deal with it. It has also to be said that a great 
deal of this evidence (relating to actual communi- 
cations from the dead) is necessarily of so very 
personal a character that it can only appeal to the 
individual persons concerned, and however con- 
vincing it may be to them does naturally not 
carry the same conviction to the world at large. 
I shall therefore for the present pass these con- 
siderations by, and, on the strength of the argu- 
ments already brought forward, assume the gen- 
eral truth of man's survival. 



172 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

The course of the argument has been some- 
what as follows. In the first place, we have 
urged the enormous possibilities (disclosed by 
modern investigation) of other life than that 
which we know — thus enlarging the bounds of 
the likely, and weakening the argument from 
improbability. In the second place, we have 
pointed out that continuance of memory seems the 
best test of survival; that even in our law courts 
(as in a Tichborne case) it is not so much the 
facts of feature and form as the facts of memory 
which are relied on to prove identity. Thirdly, 
we have argued that not only the supraliminal 
but also the subliminal self must be considered in 
this matter, and that probably the surviving self 
will arise from a harmony or conjunction between 
these two. Fourthly, we have shown that in 
respect of memory and many other matters the 
subliminal self shows a quite remarkable activity 
even in the hour of bodily death — which does not 
certainly suggest its decease and cessation from 
existence. Fifthly, we have seen that all through 
life the soul has faculties (of clairvoyance, trans- 
position of senses, and so forth) which 
point to its independence of the material body. 
Sixthly, that through love it reaches a deep 
conviction of its own duration beyond the life 
of the body. And, seventhly, we have suggested 
that it is largely through the supraliminal and 
self-conscious life that the sense of identity 
and individuality is educed and finally es- 
tablished. 



SURVIVAL OF THE SELF 1 73 

Proceeding, then, further along these lines, the 
next and obvious question which arises is, In 
what sort of body is this continuing life mani- 
fested? That it must be manifested in some 
sort of body is, I think, clear. If we had only 
arrived at the conclusion that at death the hu- 
man being merged in the All-soul, or became 
an indistinguishable portion of the 'Happy 
Mass' — that his individual memory flowed out 
into the great ocean of the world-memory and 
became lost in it, and that his power of indi- 
vidual action or perception passed away in 
like manner — why then the question of a 
continuing body could not well arise, or at 
farthest stretch such body could only be thought 
of as something indistinguishable from the 
entire universe. But if there is any truth in 
the idea of an individual survival, then it 
seems clear that there must be some kind of 
form, to mark the bounds of the individual, 
and to give outline to his relations to other 
individuals — whether those relations be active 
and invasive or passive and receptive; there 
must be some surface of resistance and separa- 
tion. 

With this question I shall deal in the next 
chapter. Before, however, going into any defi- 
nite theory of this 'soul-body,' it may be use- 
ful to dwell for a moment on general con- 
siderations. In the first place, it is clear that if 
the individual survives, he does not do so in 
any fixed and unchanging form. The form of 



174 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

the individual is not fixed in this earth-life; nor 
can we expect or wish it to be so in any- 
other life. As long as there is a continuous 
stream of experience and memory, going on from 
this life to another life, and from that perchance 
to others — that is all we can expect to find. There 
may, indeed, be a fixed and transcendent Indi- 
viduality, an aspect of the Universal, at the root 
of all these experiences, but with that we are 
hardly concerned at this moment — only with the 
stream of personal manifestations which proceed 
from it — everchanging yet linked together from 
hour to hour. In the second place, though we 
have dwelt upon and emphasized the idea of 
separateness and differentiation, in the surviving 
self, in contra-distinction to the idea of fusion 
in a formless aggregate, yet it is clear here too 
that the common life and bonds must hold in- 
dividuals together, just as much as, if not 
more than, in the earth-life. The salient facts 
of telepathy, sympathy, clairvoyance, and so 
forth convince us that souls, freed to some 
extent from their grosser present envelopes, 
will react upon each other in the future, or 
in that farther world, more swiftly and more 
intimately than they do now. And as they 
progress from stage to stage, developing indi- 
vidualities and differences always on a grander 
and grander scale, so they will also develop 
through love their organic union with each 
other. It seems possible, indeed, that growth 
will largely take place through love-fusion; till 



SURVIVAL OF THE SELF 1 75 

at length, rising into the highest ranges of 
combined Individuality and Universality, the 
transformed consciousness of each soul will take 
on its true quality — "that of space itself — which 
is at rest everywhere." 



CHAPTER X 

THE INNER OR SPIRITUAL BODY 

In order to form a conception of what kind of 
body the surviving Self may have, it seems best 
for the moment to go back to the genesis of 
our present body. We saw (chapter vii.) that 
we were compelled to suppose, even in the first 
germ of our actual body an intelligent form 
of some kind at work, which while gathering 
up and representing race-memories of the past, 
presided over and directed their rehabilitation in 
the present, thus building up the present body 
according to a certain pattern — (though subject 
of course to modification by outer difficulties 
and obstacles). From the very first, the exceed- 
ing complexity and delicacy of the movements 
within the germ-cells, combined with the decisive- 
ness of their divisions and differentiations, and 
the perfection and adaptation of the bodily 
structures and organs ultimately produced, all 
point in the suggested direction. 1 At the same 
time, we were compelled to conclude that this 
form, whose first manifestations in the tiny germ* 
cell evidently originate from quite ultra-micro- 

1 See supra, eh. ii. p. 15; also The World of Life, by A. R. 
Wallace, ch. xvii. "The Mystery of the Cell." 

I76 



THE INNER OR SPIRITUAL BODY 1 77 

scopic movements, was itself invisible, invisible 
through belonging either to an ultra-microscopic 
world, or to a world of a fourth-dimensional or 
other order of existence. I think, therefore, that 
for the present we may accept that conclusion, and 
fairly suppose that some such invisible form under- 
lies the genesis of each of our bodies. 

But at the same time the conclusion of invisi- 
bility must not be supposed to carry with it 
the conclusion of immateriality. Quite the con- 
trary. A creature living in the two-dimensional 
world formed by the water-film on the surface 
of a pond might have no conception of the 
water-world below or the air-world above — both 
of which might be quite invisible to it; all 
the same a fish or a bird breaking through the 
surface would instantly cause some very powerful 
and very material phenomena there ! And again, 
though atoms and electrons individually may 
be quite invisible, it is only a question of their 
number and the force of their electric charges, 
as to how far they intrude upon what we call 
the material world. Also, we must remember 
that invisibility or imperceptibility does not by 
any means imply non-occupation of space. On 
the contrary again. For four-dimensional exist- 
ence carries with it an occupation of space which 
is quite miraculous to us — as, for instance, the 
power of appearing in two places at the same 
time; while a number of ultra-microscopic atoms, 
by their electrostatic attractions and repulsions, 
may maintain definite relations of distance from 



178 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

each other, and may altogether constitute a cloud 
of considerable size and complex organization — 
quite imperceptible as a rule, yet occupying a 
definite area and fully capable of affecting mate- 
rial things. 

It may be a question, then, whether it is not 
some such invisible cloud — perhaps of quite 
human size and measurement — which at con- 
ception begins to enter the fertilized germ-cell, 
stimulating it to division, and penetrating further 
and further into the newly-formed body-cells, 
as by thousands and millions they divide and 
multiply to form the growing organism. What- 
ever it is, it is something of infinitely subtle 
organization and constitution, representing the 
inmost vitality of the body, and not that inmost 
vitality in a merely general sense, but the vitality 
of every portion and section of the body. It 
establishes itself within the gross body (or it 
builds that body round itself) and becomes the 
organizer and provider of its life; maintains its 
form and structure during life, fortifies it against 
change and disease, and wards off as long as it 
can the arrival of death. 

What, then, of Death? Why, granted so much 
as we have supposed, it seems easy to suppose 
that at death this inner body passes away again. 
It just leaves the gross body behind and passes 
out of it. For a fourth-dimensional being this 
must be easy to do ! But not to presume too 
much on other-dimensional conditions, if we only 
assume the inner body to be such a cloud of 



THE INNER OR SPIRITUAL BODY 1 79 

atoms or electrons as already mentioned, the 
passage of such atoms through the tissues of the 
gross body would be entirely in accordance with 
the well-known facts of osmose and the diffusion 
of liquids and gases, and would present no ex- 
ceptional or impossible problem. Through cell- 
walls and muscular and other tissues such atoms 
would pass, conceivably maintaining still their 
relative 'form' and organization with regard to 
each other, and forming a cloud similar to that 
which entered the germ and other cells at con- 
ception (though of course so far modified by 
the life-experience), and leaving now the gross 
body devitalized, and doomed to slow corrup- 
tion and to serve only as material for lower 
forms. 

One would not, of course, venture on con- 
jectures so speculative as the above, if it were 
not that long tradition and history, and even 
modern experience, so singularly confirm or favor 
their general truth. The conception of a cloud- 
like ghost — sometimes visible, sometimes invis- 
ible 1 — leaving the body at death, roaming 
through the fields of Hades or some hidden world, 
and from time to time revisiting the glimpses of 
the moon and the gaze of wondering mortals — 
penetrates all literature and tradition. Among 
all primitive peoples it seems to be accepted 
as a matter of course; it informs the legends 

*Of the conditions which may cause the invisible cloud 
to become visible we shall speak farther on. 



l8o THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

and the drama and the philosophies of the more 
cultivated; it claims detailed historical instances 
and proofs * (as in the case of Field-marshal von 
Grumbkoff, to whom the wraith of King Frederick 
Augustus announced his own death — which had 
just occurred; or in the case of the poet Petrarch, 
to whom Bishop Colonna made a similar an- 
nouncement) ; and in modern times it has met 
with extraordinary and in many quarters quite 
unexpected confirmation at the hands of scientific 
investigation. 

To this evidence of general probability that 
at death a vital and subtle yet substantial inner 
body is withdrawn from every part and portion 
of the gross body, we may add the evidence, such 
as it is, from actual sensation and experience. In 
the hour of death and in allied physical 
changes sensations are experienced corresponding 
to such a conclusion. Though necessarily there 
is little quite direct evidence, for the actual 
moment of death, yet in the just preceding stage, 
of extreme weakness, the sensation of depletion 
in every part of the body, and of withdrawal, 
as of a hand being drawn out of a glove, is very 
noticeable. (And it may be remarked that clair- 
voyants not unfrequently observe, at death itself, 



1 See, for a list of these, Flammarion's L'Inconnu, pp. 565- 
69; also Lombroso's Fenomeni ipnotici, &c, p. 199. The nu- 
merous quasi-historical records of the appearance after death 
of the saints (generally in a cloud-like form) must also not 
be passed over; though, on account of these records being 
connected with the various churches, they are necessarily sub- 
ject to suspicion! 



THE INNER OR SPIRITUAL BODY l8l 

a luminous cloud of the general outline and 
shape of the dying person being slowly distilled, 
head first, from his or her head.) Furthermore, 
in the state of ecstasy — which is closely allied 
to death — the same sensation of withdrawal is 
experienced. The person seems to himself to 
stand outside and a little beyond his own body — 
and doubtless this experience is denoted in the 
very etymology of the word. In trance the 
same: the medium experiences the extreme of 
exhaustion while some portion of her vital 
being is functioning (as it appears) outside. 
Under anaesthetics it is a common experience to 
dream that one has left the body and is flying 
through space. (See The Art of Creation, p. 18.) 
And again, in the case of love — whose close 
relation to death we have several times already 
noted — whether it be in the strain of emo- 
tional desire or the stress of the physical orgasm 
this 'hand from the glove' sensation is often 
most acute and seems to suggest that every 
portion of the body is contributing its part to 
the process in hand; which indeed in this case 
of love may very fairly be supposed to con- 
sist in a transfer of the cloud-like organism 
(or a large part of it) to the other person con- 
cerned. 

There are cases, too, where in a kind of dream- 
consciousness the sensation of the self passing 
out through walls and other obstacles is so 
powerful as to leave an impress on the mind 
ever after. Such is the case already alluded to 



1 82 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

(chapter viii. p. 148, supra) from Footfalls on the 
Boundary of Another World, where a lady half 
waking from sleep "felt herself carried to the 
wall of her room, with a feeling that it must 
arrest her further progress. But no; she seemed 
to pass through it into the open air. Outside 
the house was a tree; and this also she appeared 
to traverse as if it interposed no obstacle." She 
thus passed to the house of a lady friend, held 
a conversation with her, and in her dream 
returned. But afterward the friend reported 
that she had seen the apparition that night and 
conversed with it. Similarly a young friend of 
mine, dreaming one night that his mother (in 
the same house) was ill, was intensely conscious 
of dashing — not along corridors and through 
doorways but through the partition walls of two 
rooms — into the chamber where his mother slept, 
when finding her all right he returned; and the 
experience was so vivid that it remained with 
him for days afterward. 

Taking all these considerations together, we 
may say that there is a strong general probability 
in favor of the proposition put forward. And it 
is interesting and important to find that at this 
juncture modern science is coming out from her 
old haunts and beginning seriously to tackle a 
question which she has hitherto for the most 
part evaded or ignored. The whole of the psy- 
chology and even physiology of Death have (as 
I have previously remarked) been sadly neg- 



THE INNER OR SPIRITUAL BODY 1 83 

lected; but now and of late quite a number of 
books on this subject have been published, 1 and 
a good deal of scientific activity is moving in that 
direction. 

Professor Fournier d'Albe, in his book New 
Light on Immortality, 2 has made some very in- 
teresting suggestions — which though they may not 
as yet be accounted more than suggestions, seem 
to be in the right direction, and certainly acquire 
some authority from his intimate command of 
the modern discoveries in Physics as well as 
in the field of Psychical Research. His view 
is that every one of the twenty-five thousand 
million million cells which constitute say the 
human body has probably some 'centrosome' or 
other vital point within it, which is in fact the 
governing and organizing power of that cell. Such 
point or collection of points, though 'material,' 
may likely weigh only a ten-thousandth part of the 
cell-weight. Hence if this 'souF was abstracted 
from each cell, the total weight of the twenty-five 
thousand billion souls resulting would be only a 
ten-thousandth part of the body weight, or about 
a fifth of an ounce! But these soul-fragments 
or psychomeres as he calls them, would together 
make up the total soul of the man, and — as al- 
ready explained — might not only by their nega- 
tive and positive charges maintain certain spatial 



1 We may mention Death: Its Causes and Phenomena, Car- 
rington & Meader (London, 1911); and the list of works 
quoted in the same book, p. 540 et seq. 

2 Longmans, 1908. 



1 84 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

relations and organization with regard to each 
other, but would, owing to their extreme minute- 
ness, easily pass through the tissues and liberate 
themselves from the gross body. Thus a human 
soul, weighing a fraction only of an ounce, but of 
like shape and size to the human body, and of 
intense vitality and subtlety, might disengage 
itself at death, to begin a fresh career and to 
enter into a new life — leaving the existing body 
to fall to ruin and decay. Further, Professor 
Fournier d'Albe, greatly bold in speculation, sur- 
mises that such a spiritual body, discharging the 
atmosphere from its interior frame, might quite 
naturally rise in the air till it attained its position 
of equilibrium at a great height up — say in a 
region 35 — 80 miles over the earth, which would 
thus become the (first) abode of the departed. 

Whatever may be said about the details of 
this theory, and whatever difficulties they may 
present, the main outlines — as I have already 
indicated — seem quite feasible and probable, and 
in line with world-old belief and tradition. And 
certain details (which we shall return to again) 
are powerfully corroborated by modern ob- 
servation. 

Meanwhile it is interesting to find, in corrob- 
oration of the general theory, that some experi- 
ments lately carried out, in weighing the body 
before and after death, have apparently 
yielded the result of a decided loss of weight at 
or very shortly after, the moment of Death. 
Dr. Duncan M'Dougall, experimenting with 



THE INNER OR SPIRITUAL BODY 1 85 

considerable care, found that one of his patients 
lost J4 ounce precisely at death; * another lost J^ 
ounce, with an additional loss of 1 ounce 
during the next few minutes, after which no 
further loss took place; another yielded very 
nearly the same result; and so on. Thus we have 
the old Egyptian idea of the weighing of the soul 
after death resuscitated in a very practical form in 
modern times — only with the medical practitioner 
in the place of Thoth, the great assessor of the 
Underworld! And it would be satisfactory to 
know how far modern observation of a normal 
soul weight corresponds with ancient specula- 
tion in the matter. It is curious anyhow to 
find that Fournier d'Albe's estimates are so 
nearly corroborated by Dr. M'Dougall; and we 
must await with interest further and perhaps 
more detailed observations along the same 
line. 

Another line along which something seems to 
have been done by hard and fast science to cor- 
roborate the general theory of the extrusion of 
a cloud-like spirit form from the body at death, 
is in the matter of photography. Dr. Baraduc, 
in his book, Mes Morts: leurs manifestations 

1 "At the end of three hours and fort y minutes he expired, 
and suddenly, coincident with death, the beam end of the 
scale dropped with an audible stroke, hitting against the 
lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound. The 
loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce." See 
reference given by Carrington and Meader, op. cit., p. 373. 
The reports of the experiments are apparently given in the 
annals of the American Society for Psychical Research for 
June, 1907. 



1 86 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

(1908), gives an account of photographs which 
he took of his wife's body within an hour after 
death and of his son's body (in the coffin) nine 
hours after death. When developed the plates all 
showed cloud-like emanations hovering over the 
corpses, not certainly having definite human out-- 
line, but apparently shot through by lines and 
streaks of light. And though here again the ex- 
periments are not conclusive, they so far are cor- 
roborative, and may be taken to indicate a direc- 
tion for further inquiry. 

This last I think we are especially entitled to 
say, on account of what has been already done in 
the way of photographing the cloud-figures (some 
of them very definite in outline) which are found 
to emanate on occasions from mediums in the 
state of trance. For notwithstanding the doubt 
which has commonly been cast on all such photo- 
graphs and notwithstanding the very obvious ease 
with which cameras can be manipulated and 
shadow-figures of some kind fraudulently pro- 
duced, the evidence for the genuineness of some 
such 'spirit' photographs is — to any one who 
really studies it — beyond question. The cele- 
brated "Katie King," who appeared at seances in 
connection with the medium Florence Cook, and 
during a period of two years or more was seen by 
some hundreds of people — and especially studied 
by Sir William Crookes — was photographed 
several times under test conditions. 1 Professor 

1 See a long account in the Spiritualist for 15th May, 1873; 
also given by F. d'Albe, op. cit., p. 220, et seq. 



THE INNER OR SPIRITUAL BODY 1 87 

Charles Richet, who when he first heard of 
Crookes' conclusions was convulsed with laughter 
over their supposed absurdity, afterward con- 
fessed his error, 1 for time after time he not only 
saw a phantasm ("Beni Boa") in connection with 
the Algerian medium Aisha, but obtained 
photographs of the same. 2 Dr. A. R. Wallace, 
in a long note, pp. 190, 191 of his book, Miracles 
and Modern Spiritualism, gives a careful descrip- 
tion of his own experiments in this line. Several 
different figures were at different times photo- 
graphed in connection with Mme. D'Esperance; 
and the very detailed account, with illustrations, 
which she gives of these phenomena in ch. xxvii. 
of her book, Shadowland, must give the unbe- 
liever pause. And so on. 3 The evidence is so 
abundant, and so on the whole so well confirmed, 
that we are practically now compelled to admit 
(and this is the point in hand) that cloud-like 
forms of human outline emanating from a 
medium's or other person's living body may 
at times be caught by the photographic plate. 
And this is important because it removes the 



*See R. J. Thompson's Proofs of Life after Death (1906). 

2 See Phenomenes de la Villa Carmen, by Charles Richet, 
Paris, 1902; also Lombroso, op. cit., pp. 194-96. 

3 Mr. H. Carrington, in his Physical Phenomena of Spiritual- 
ism, has described in detail fraudulent methods of photography 
with which he is well acquainted. Nevertheless he seems to 
believe that some cases of "spirit photography" are genuine, 
and gives instances; see his book already quoted Death, &c, 
pp. 359, et seq. See also Mr. E. T. Bennett's book on Spirit- 
ualism, with introduction by Sir Oliver Lodge, pp. 113-20. 



1 88 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

phenomenon from the region of the fanciful or 
imaginative and gives it automatic and objective 
registration. 

That these forms occurring and occasionally 
photographed in connection with mediums are 
independent 'spirits' or souls is of course in no 
way assumed. They may be such, or (what 
seems more likely) they may be simply extensions 
of the spiritual or inner body of the medium. 
The point that interests us here is that their ap- 
pearance in either case points to the actual exist- 
ence of such an inner body, capable of becoming 
extruded from the gross body, and of becoming 
the seat and manifestation of intelligence. 
Further than that we need not go at present. 

But it will be objected, if the inner or spiritual 
body is, as has just been supposed, of such a subtle 
and tenuous nature as to be in itself quite invisible, 
what connection can this have with phantoms 
that can be photographed, or that can be seen, or 
that can be actually touched and handled? This 
question — the question as to how an excessively 
rare and tenuous and invisible being may gradu- 
ally condense and materialize so as to come first 
within the region of photographic activity, and 
then within the region of normal visibility, and 
so on into audible and tangible and material 
existence and operation, I shall discuss more at 
length in the next chapter. Suffice it here to point 
out that the general consensus of thoughtful 
opinion on this subject at the present time points 
to a probable condensation of some kind, and 



THE INNER OR SPIRITUAL BODY 1 89 

utilization of such suitable materials as may be to 
hand, by which the subtle inner body gradually 
clothes itself in an outer and denser garment. 
Whether with Fournier d'Albe we suppose a soul- 
like core to every single cell, or whether we take 
a more diffused and general view, in any case we 
seem compelled to believe that our actual bodies 
are carried on by organizing powers distributed 
in centres throughout the body. 1 If by any means 
these vital centres were separated from the gross 
body, it would still seem natural for them to con- 
tinue their organizing activity whenever they were 
surrounded with suitable material. And if, as 
seems likely, in the case of mediums and seances, 
a considerable quantity of loose floating organic 
material is commonly evolved from the bodies 
of those present, such effluences might be quickly 
caught up and condensed by any such vital 
centres present into more or less visible forms 
and figures. 

If, by way of illustration, we were to suppose 
an army-corps to represent a gross body, then 
the officers, from corporals to general, would 
represent the inner or organizing soul; and all 
these officers together, though really being a 
'body,' would constitute a mass so small and so 
scattered compared with the mass-body of the 
army, that in comparison they would be invisible, 
and might easily all pass out and away from the 
army without being observed. They might pass 
out and conceivably organize another army-corps 
*See The Art of Creation, ch. vi. 



190 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

elsewhere; but the result on that left behind (of 
which they were really the soul) would soon be 
seen in its complete disintegration and collapse. 
Now suppose further that in a neighboring nation, 
across the frontier, there was a great deal of 
disaffection existing — that large masses of the 
people there were out of touch with their own 
Government (the case of a medium in trance), 
and waiting for some one to come and organize 
them. Then it is easy to imagine the small group 
of officers aforesaid passing across the frontier 
(quite unseen and unobserved) and immediately 
on doing so finding ready to their hands a quan- 
tity of material just suitable for their activity. In 
a wonderfully short time the various officers 
would begin to organize the various departments 
of a new army-corps; the people would flock to 
their standard. Even in a day or two the faint 
outline of a new political form or movement 
would show itself; and in a week this might be- 
come substantial enough to exhibit serious mani- 
festations of force! 

The general application of this to the question 
in hand is obvious enough. But there is an- 
other point which it illustrates — a point which 
we have raised before. I am convinced that 
science will never yield any very fruitful under- 
standing of the world, until it recognizes that 
life and intelligence (of course in the broadest 
signification) pervade all the phenomena of 
Nature. It is perfectly useless to try to explain 
human development, human destiny, mental 



THE INNER OR SPIRITUAL BODY I9I 

activity, the forces of nature, and so forth, in 
terms of dead matter. No explanation of such 
a kind could possibly be satisfying. And more 
and more it is becoming clear that even what 
we call the inorganic world is as subtle and swift 
in its responses as what we call the organic. 
Many difficulties must inevitably arise in any at- 
tempted solution of the problem before us — that 
problem which is generally denoted by "the nature 
of the soul and its relation to the body"; but 
we shall never arrive at any harmonious view 
of the whole question until we are persuaded, 
and practically assume, that life and intelligence 
in some degree are characteristic of all that 
we call 'matter' as well as of all we call 
mind, and pervade the whole structure of the uni- 
verse. We shall then see that the forces, for 
instance, which organize and direct the human 
body, even down to its minutest parts, are prob- 
ably just as individual and intelligent in their 
action as those (to take the example just given) 
which organize and direct an army-corps. 



CHAPTER XI 

ON THE CREATION AND MATERIALIZATION 
OF FORMS 

I have suggested more than once, in preceding 
chapters of this book, and in The Art of Creation 
and elsewhere, that in the ordinary evolution of 
thought, in dreams, in trance and in other 
psychic states, we are witness of a process which 
is continually and eternally going on, by which 
the faintest invisible forms and outlines, the 
nearest cloud-currents of the inner soul, gradu- 
ally condense themselves, pass into visibility, 
tangibility, and so forth, and (if the process is 
continued) ultimately take their place among the 
substantial things of the outer world. 

Hitherto this thought has been applied in 
certain departments of inquiry, but I am of 
impression that its considerable and world-wide 
significance has been missed. Freud, in his 
Traumdeutung, insists that behind the dream, and 
inspiring its action and symbolism there always 
lurks an emotion, a desire, a wish. And Have- 
lock Ellis (though with due caution) corrobo- 
rates this. He speaks 1 of "the controlling power 
of emotion on dream-ideas," and says, "the 

1 The World of Dreams (Constable, 1911), p. 107. 

192 



ON THE MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS 1 93 

fundamental source of our dream-life may be said 
to be emotion." That is, an emotion (from 
whatever source) arises in the mind. Vague and 
cloudlike at first, it presently takes form, and 
(if in sleep) clothes itself with the imagery of a 
dream, which becomes at last vivid and dramatic 
and real, to a degree which astounds us. But 
dream-life is only a paraphrase, so to speak, of 
waking life — a phase largely corresponding to 
the waking life of children 1 and animals; and 
in waking life the same thing happens. A wish 
or desire appears in the background of the mind; 
it moves forward and becomes a definite thought 
and a plan; then it moves forward again and be- 
comes an action; the action creates a result; and 
the desire finally establishes itself or its image in 
the actual world. These emotions and desires 
and the images which sprung from them have a 
certain vitality and growth-power of their own. 
The figures in dreams move of themselves and 
concatenate with each other of their own accord 
— much as the figures do in a drama, as Cole- 
ridge long ago observed — and as the waking 
thoughts of all of us do, when we leave them a 
little to themselves and to go with loose rein. 
More than that; in some cases waking thoughts 
or passions become powerful enough to take pos- 
session of the whole man and embody them- 
selves in his deeds — sometimes to heroic, some- 
times to criminal ends. Or, taking possession of 
portions of the man, they precipitate conflict 
x The World of Dreams, p. 190. 



194 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

within him. The dramatic quality of dreams is 
evidently due to the different figures or in- 
cidents of the dream being inspired by different 
qualities or experiences of the dreamer; and in 
the waking man the same process may lead to 
tragic struggles and disintegrations of personality. 
In hysteric patients, where the central controlling 
power is weak, the very thought or fear of a dis- 
ease may seize upon a certain centre in the body 
and stimulate there all the symptoms of that dis- 
ease; or a mental image may seize upon a certain 
portion of the brain, and break up the personality 
with strange new manifestations. 

In all these cases, and scores of others which 
we cannot consider now, the same action is taking 
place — by which invisible psychic and spiritual 
forces, for good or evil, are ever pressing forward 
into the manifest, and condensing themselves into 
visible and even tangible forms, or taking pos- 
session of existing forms for the purpose of ex- 
pression and manifestation. And here we have 
(as I think will be seen one day) the whole 
rationale of Creation — we have the conception 
which brings into line the phenomena of the visible 
and material world and their genesis, with the 
genesis of thoughts in our own minds, and 
their passage into visibility and expression; we 
have the conception which unites the mental and 
material, and which makes the whole Creation 
luminous with meaning. Especially is this ob- 
vious to-day, when the theory of electrons is in- 
troducing us to a world as far finer and subtler 



ON THE MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS 1 95 

than the atom, as the atom is finer and subtler 
than the tangible world of our experience; and 
is suggesting that these finest states of matter are 
of the nature of electrical charges, which, 
again, are quite analogous to mental states. 1 
Thus we have, almost forced upon us as the 
key to the creation of visible forms, the conception 
of a process of condensation by which the 
most subtle thought and emotion does in 
course of time (brief or lengthy) tend to manifest 
itself in material shape, and may ultimately take 
on the most persistent and quasi-indestructible 
forms. 

Reverting, then, to the subject of last chapter, 
we see that a 'spiritual' body — that is, a material 
body of a texture so fine and so swiftly plastic 
as to be the analogue of thought — is a conception 
quite in line with the conclusions of modern 
science; and that granted the existence of such 
a thing, it is quite in line also to conclude that 
it would tend toward condensation and manifesta- 
tion in grosser and more visible form. I gave 
in that chapter some general outline of how 
such condensation might take place. I now pro- 
pose to consider this process more in detail, and 
to give some evidence as to its actually taking 
place. 

There is something perhaps a little comic 
about the idea of spirit photography — something 
which has thus helped to retard its acceptance. 
*See Electrons, by Sir Oliver Lodge (George Bell, 1910). 



I96 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

The busy photographer with his camera is so 
banal, and sometimes so obnoxious, a figure, 
that to think of him photographing a ghost, 
or the spirit of a dead relation, verges on bathos 
or the burlesque. Nevertheless, Nature does not 
attend to our canons in such matters, and in 
reality the thing is perfectly feasible and in 
order. It is well known that the photographic 
plate is most sensitive to the violet end of the 
spectrum — that it is this end which has the 
actinic quality. Moreover, it is known that the 
actinic quality extends beyond this end, and that 
there are ultra-violet rays which we cannot see, 
and which yet are photographically powerful. 
But the violet rays, as is also well known, are 
those whose light-waves are smallest — being only 
about half the size of the red waves ; * and the 
ultra-violet rays are still smaller. Consequently, 
by means of the violet end of the spectrum, 
information can be got about small objects and 
infinitesimal details which would elude the more 
ordinary light. A particle, in fact, may be so 
small that it would reflect the violet waves, while 
it would be unable to reflect the red — just as a 
boat floating on the water will reflect and turn 
back tiny ripples, while it will simply be tossed 
about by good-sized waves. Advantage has been 
taken of this in microscopy, and by ingenious ar- 
rangements photographs of objects under the 

1 Say, in millionths of an inch, fifteen millionths for the 
violet (at the dark line A), and twenty-seven millionths for 
the red (at B). 



ON THE MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS 1 97 

microscope can now be taken by ultra-violet light, 
so as to show the very minutest details. 

The application of this to the question before 
us is clear. If there be a spiritual body, com- 
posed of particles so infinitesimal as to be — to 
begin with — far beyond the limits of visibility, 
yet gradually condensing and accreting to them- 
selves other and subsidiary particles, there might 
come a time when such a cloud-form would ap- 
proach the limit of visibility — the molecules of 
which it was composed having grown so far. 
It would be perfectly natural, then, for a body 
composed of such molecules to come into the 
region of possible photography in the camera 
through the ultra-violet rays before it came into 
the region of visibility to the human eye by 
means of ordinary light. And thus the seeming 
paradox may be accounted for — of the appearance 
of spirit-forms, or even thought-forms, on the 
photographic plate which are not yet discernible 
by the eye. At a later stage of materialization 
the form may of course yield an image both to the 
eye and to the camera. 1 

Again, in this connection, it is often urged 
against the reality of spirit-forms, ghosts, and 
so forth, that they cannot bear a strong light; 
and this is held to dispose of all their claims 
for consideration. But what has just been said 
shows that on the contrary such an effect is just 
what might be expected. The delicate growing 
structure, whose particles were just large enough 
1 See, for examples, ch. x. pp. 186-7, swpra. 



I98 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

to reflect the smaller light-waves, might easily be 
broken up and quite disintegrated by the larger 
and more powerful waves of a strong glare — 
just as, in fact, our forms, which can endure 
light, are broken up and disintegrated by the 
still larger waves of intense heat. Katie King, 
who, as before mentioned, appeared so many times 
in connection with the medium Florence Cook, 
was frequently seen to fade away if the light 
was too strong. "At the earlier seances she 
could only come out of the cabinet for a few 
seconds at a time, once or twice during the 
seance; she had to go back quickly into the 
cabinet to gather fresh power from her medium, 
saying that the strong and unaccustomed bril- 
liancy of the light made her 'melt quite away.' " * 
And Nepenthes, that finely formed and beautiful 
figure which appeared in connection with Mme. 
D'Esperance, was more than once seen, by a 
large company assembled, to walk by the side of 
the medium up to the open French window at the 
end of the room and then to disappear as she 
came into the full daylight. 2 

Photographs, it may be noticed, of forms ap- 
pearing at seances, or in connection with sitters, 
vary from mere cloudlike masses without or al- 
most without shape to very distinct human 
figures with much detail of feature and dress, 3 

1 See document signed by five responsible witnesses and 
published in the Spiritualist of loth May, 1873. 

2 See Materializations, by Mme. D'Esperance, a lecture given 
in 1903 in London (Light Publishing Co.). 

9 See illustrations in Shadowland, passim. 



ON THE MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS 1 99 

— the same figure being often recognized in vari- 
ous stages of clearness and definition. And 
this is interesting because it entirely corroborates 
the observations made in hundreds of seances, 
and in other cases, in which a form is first dis- 
tinguished by the eye as a faintly luminous cloud, 
and gradually grows in distinctness and defi- 
nition till it becomes visible in all detail, and 
even tangible. Mme. D'Esperance, whose book, 
Shadowland, should be read on account of its in- 
telligent handling and obvious sincerity, as well 
as on account of the remarkable phenomena re- 
ported, describes (p. 1.5 1) the first occasion 
on which a 'materialization' appeared to her: — 
u One evening, for some reason or other, we were 
sitting without a lighted lamp. The daylight had 
not faded when we commenced the sitting, but 
though it grew dark no one suggested making 
a light. Happening to glance over to the part of 
the room where the shadows were deepest it 
seemed to me that there was a curious cloudy 
luminosity standing out distinct and clear from 
the darkness. I watched it for a minute or two 
without saying anything, wondering where it 
came from and how it was caused. I thought 
it must be a reflection from the street lamps out- 
side, though I had never seen it like that before. 
While I watched, the luminous cloud seemed to 
concentrate itself, become substantial, and 
form itself into a figure of a child, illumi- 
nated as it were by daylight that did not shine 
on it but, somehow, from within it — the darkness 



200 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

of the room seeming to act as a background, 
throwing up by contrast every curve of the form 
and every feature into strong relief." And in 
another passage she says: — "As soon as I have 
entered the mediumistic cabinet my first impres- 
sion is of being covered with spider webs. Then 
I feel that the air is filled with substance, and 
a kind of white and vaporous mass, quasi- 
luminous, like the steam from a locomotive, is 
formed in front of the abdomen. After this 
mass has been tossed and agitated in every way 
for some minutes, sometimes even for half-an- 
hour, it suddenly stops, and then out of it is 
born a living being close by me." 1 

Another figure — that of Yolande (a young 
woman) — is mentioned in the samebook(p. 254) 
as appearing again and again out of such a 
filmy cloudy patch on the floor. Similarly, 
Professor Richet noticed over and over again 



x The cobwebby sensation alluded to above is often men- 
tioned by other writers. Dr. J. Maxwell, in his Metaphysical 
Phenomena (Duckworth, 1905), p. 329, describes a case in 
which the radiation of force from the fingers of a medium was 
great enough to move a small statuette five or six inches dis- 
tant, and absolutely without contact; but the phenomenon was 
accompanied by a "Spider-web or cobwebby sensation in the 
hands." The author of that interesting book Interwoven 
(Boston, 1905, copyright by S. L. Ford), speaks of "the 
protoplasmic vapor of the inner man," and says (p. 15) : "It is 
this frail vapor which comes out at death and tries to form 
into spiritual body"; and again (p. 19): "I notice at death 
that nature draws or relieves the fire of the ganglia first and 
all the lines of sensation in light which were running down 
the nerves. It looks like white seaweed, very light and airy 
and fragile ... a veil of shining which is scarcely sub- 
stance because of its white fire." 



ON THE MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS 201 

the outgrowth of a figure (Beni Boa) from a 
white cloud. "Near the cabinet we could see, 
betwixt the curtain and the table, a whitish globe 
forming, luminous, and rotating on the floor; 
from this globe Beni Boa sprang." The figure 
would then walk round the room and disappear 
again; but after a time the white cloud would 
again form and Beni Boa reappear. And Pro- 
fessor Lombroso, alluding to this, says: 1 — "This 
observation is of great importance, since it is 
not possible to attribute to fraud the formation 
of a luminous patch on the floor which trans- 
forms itself into a living being." Further, 
Lombroso says: — "Five photographs were ob- 
tained at these sittings by magnesium and 
chlorate of potash light, with a Kodak and with 
a Richard stereoscopic apparatus simultaneously, 
which fact excludes the possibility of photo- 
graphic fraud; and all the plates were developed 
in Algeria by an optician who was unaware of 
what had preceded. On the plates appeared a tall 
figure wrapped in a white mantle" (and similar 
to the figure which the seven sitters present at the 
seances had seen). 

I have alluded to this cloud-formation before as 
characteristic of an early stage of the appearance 
of these figures, and as suggesting a process of 
condensation going on. Lombroso, from various 
considerations which he brings forward (p. 185), 2 

1 Fenomeni ipnotici, &c, p. 195. 

2 Namely, the highly charged electrostatic condition of 
mediums, the luminous clouds floating near them, the stars and 



202 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

seems convinced that the phenomena of these 
forms are largely connected with radio-activity. 
He says: — "It would seem that these bodies 
belong to that further state of matter, the 
radiant state, which now at last has established a 
firm footing in science — and which thus offers the 
only hypothesis which can reconcile the ancient 
and universal belief in the persistence of some 
form of life after death with the postulates of 
science which maintain that without organ there 
can be no function." This radio-active condition 
of matter is of course that finest and most active 
state represented by the electrons — in which each 
electron is excessively minute, 1 yet moves at 
enormous speed, and carries with it an electric 
charge. It connects itself with condensation in 
this way, that "an electric charge assists vapor 
to condense," and "where ions (i.e. positively or 
negatively charged particles) are present in con- 
siderable numbers a thick mist will form when- 
ever the space is saturated with vapor." 2 And 
Fournier d'Albe says: 3 — "In the physical theory 
of ionization and condensation we have become 
familiar with the fact that the smallest charged 
particles are the most effective promoters of con- 
densation. In fact, it would suffice to extract a 

rays of light in their vicinity, the photographic activity of 
their emanations, and so forth. 

1 So much smaller than the atom that "if the earth repre- 
sented an electron, an atom would occupy a sphere with the 
sun as centre and four times the distance of the earth as 
radius." See Electrons, by Oliver Lodge, p. 98. 

2 Ibid., pp. 82, 83. 

3 Immortality, p. 148. 



ON THE MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS 203 

very small proportion of the innumerable elec- 
trons within the body to bring about a vigorous 
condensation in the moist air around it." 

Thus it is quite probable that the cloud-forma- 
tion, which in general precedes the manifesta- 
tion of distinct figures, is due to condensation, 
and in part at any rate to a condensation of 
water-vapor on the accreting particles of the 
spirit-body. And this is made the more probable 
by the strong sensation of cold which so fre- 
quently accompanies these appearances, and 
which is a common accompaniment of condensa- 
tion. Crookes, in his Researches, emphasizes 
this in connection with almost all the phenomena, 
and says 1 they u are generally preceded by a 
peculiar cold air, sometimes amounting to a de- 
cided wind. I have had sheets of paper blown 
about by it, and a thermometer lowered several 
degrees. On some occasions . . . the cold has 
been so intense that I could only compare it to 
that felt when the hand has been within a few 
inches of frozen mercury." Some such sensation 
seems to be quite a common experience, and the 
authoress of Shadowland, speaking of her earlier 
sittings (p. 228), says: — "It was not long be- 
fore the same strange disturbances in the air 
began as on the previous occasion. I felt my 
hair blown and lifted by currents of air, and cool 
breezes played about my face and hands." 

Thus (with the corroborating evidence of 

1 Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism (Burns, 
1874), p. 86. 



204 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

Crookes' thermometer) we may suppose that, 
after all, the cold airs and shivering sensations 
which seem so often to accompany apparitions 
may not be merely subjective to the observer, but 
may be real phenomena due to physical condensa- 
tions taking place in his immediate proximity. 
Moreover, it has to be noted that the condensa- 
tions may not be merely of water-vapor, but of 
other substances as well, namely (according to an 
opinion now gaining ground) , of fine matter or ef- 
fluences provided by the bodies of the sitters pres- 
ent (or some of them) as well as by the body of 
the medium. The passage last quoted from 
Shadowland continues: u then began a strange sen- 
sation, which I had sometimes felt at seances. 
Frequently I have heard it described by others as 
of cobwebs being passed over the face, but to me, 
who watched it curiously, it seemed that I could 
feel fine threads being drawn out of the pores of 
my skin." And in another passage 1 the same 
writer describes the cloud which precedes a mate- 
rialization as "a slightly luminous haze" which 
often appears "about the head, shoulders, elbows 
and sometimes the knees and feet (of the 
medium). Frequently it gathers slowly at the 
fingers, increasing in density till it resembles a 
slight transparent film of slightly luminous cotton 
wool." Further, she explains that it goes on con- 
densing till it becomes cobwebby and perceptible 
to touch. The evidence generally seems to show 
that these clouds are of the nature of effluences 

1 Materializations, p. 12. 



ON THE MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS 205 

from the medium or other person present; and 
the above quotation affords corroboration of that 
view and makes easily intelligible the great ex- 
haustion from which mediums often suffer on 
these occasions. It suggests also that the conden- 
sation is by no means of water-vapor only, but of 
other substances drawn from the interior vitality 
of the persons concerned, and necessary for the 
building up of the apparitional form. 

It is difficult in the case, for instance, of "Katie 
King," who, as already said, appeared hundreds 
of times during two or three years, or of Estella 
Martha, who appeared to her husband during 
five years and in 380 or more seances in connec- 
tion with the medium Kate Fox, 1 not to believe 
that such figures are (as we should say) really the 
individuals they profess to be, and not mere 
thought-forms or images projected from the 
medium's under-mind. But whichever view we 
take, it is obvious that they are centres in some 
degree, of intelligent force or vitality, centres 
which, though in their essence rare and tenuous 
as thought or feeling, succeed in clothing them- 
selves with a certain grade of corporeality by the 
use of the materials at hand, and in so coming 
into visible manifestation. And this general view 
is confirmed by the fact, so often observed, 
that when the same figure appears repeatedly, it 
does, as time goes on, acquire skill and adroit- 
ness in carrying out the process of condensa- 
tion or whatever it is, which is concerned, and 
*R. Dale Owen, The Debatable Land, p. 399. 



206 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

consequently comes into manifestation and activity 
more quickly and decisively. Also, it may be 
noted, and has often been observed (as in the 
case of the said Estella Martha and many 
others), that by practice the figure attains the 
power of enduring strong light — that is, its state 
of condensation reaches a point of solidity almost 
comparable with that of our tissues, which are not 
as a rule disintegrated by light. 

The radio-activity of the 'inner being' also 
helps to explain the extraordinary manifestations 
of sheer physical force in these connections. 
Some of these manifestations have been so 
astonishing, that the fact alone has caused them 
to be disbelieved; but though, of course, fraud 
has played a part in such phenomena, and has 
to be guarded against, it is now quite evident 
that in a multitude of cases fraud does not enter 
at all. 

Eusapia Paladino, for instance — though cap- 
able of little fraudulences — was obviously the 
seat of extraordinary powers not to be explained 
by these. Mr. Carrington, who made a special 
study of this medium, and who (as I have said 
before) has also made a special study of fraudu- 
lent methods in so-called spiritualism, vouches 
most strongly for the great exhibitions of inex- 
plicable force in her vicinity — especially perhaps 
in the way of levitations. He says: — "Every 
one who has studied Eusapia's phenomena knows 
that practically every seance (for some reason) 
commences with table-levitations — this, whether 



ON THE MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS 207 

they are wanted or not! It seems the necessary 
programme, and it is almost invariably carried 
out. Seeing them time after time, one can obtain 
a very fair idea of their nature and reality. And 
I may say that I now consider levitations 
as well established as any other physical facts. 
They are not open to the objection to which most 
psychical phenomena are subjected — that they 
cannot be repeated or induced and studied experi- 
mentally, as one would study other physical facts 
— for they can be induced and studied in just 
this laboratory manner. I have probably seen 
several hundreds of these levitations now, under 
every conceivable condition and in excellent light, 
and I consider them so far established that, as 
Count Solovovo said, "the burden of proof is now 
on the man who asserts that they are not real, 
not upon the man who asserts that they are." 
These are pretty strong words, and by a very 
responsible observer! And then Mr. Carrington 
proceeds with a detailed account of these and 
other physical phenomena. 1 

Some years ago, the reports and accounts of 
such phenomena were generally at once dismissed 
as absurd and incredible; but by a remarkable 
coincidence the last few years have seen the 
wonderful development of the science of radio- 
activity — dating from the epoch-making experi- 
ments of Crookes, in 1879 an d earlier. These 
experiments, curiously enough, were worked out 
during much of the same period as Crookes* 

*See Annals of Psychical Science, Report 1910-11. 



208 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

researches into spiritualistic phenomena, and have 
led to the shedding of much light upon the lat- 
ter. For the new science developed from them, 
and already more or less popularized, 1 compels 
us to suppose that the most enormous forces 
lurk all around, within the very structure of 
the atom itself — which of course is totally in- 
visible to our eyes. The new facts observed, 
with regard to radium and other such substances, 
seem to compel the supposition that each atom 
is composed of an immense number (say 100,000) 
of highly charged electrical particles moving each 
with huge velocity — a velocity at any rate com- 
parable to that of light. The dissociation of 
such atoms and the liberation of their constituent 
particles develops a fabulous energy. When it 
is calculated that one gramme or fifteen grains 
of matter (say the weight of thirty postage 
stamps) moving with the speed of light, would 
have energy enough to lift the British Navy to 
the top of Ben Nevis (Crookes) ; or that one 
milligramme (say the sixty-sixth part of a grain 
of wheat) at the same speed would represent the 
energy of fifteen million foot-tons (Lodge) ; or 
when, according to J. J. Thomson, the combined 
speed and mass of the electrons within such a 
milligramme of matter would total up to the 
work represented by a hundred million kilogram- 
metres; 2 then we can at any rate see — whatever 

1 See Gustave Le Bon's Evolution of Matter (Walter Scott 
Publishing Co., 1907). 
2 See Le Bon, p. 45. 



ON THE MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS 209 

small variations there may be in the estimates — 
how immense are the potentialities of the tiniest 
points of matter; how each minutest atom 
comprehends, as Shelley says, u a world of loves 
and hatreds" (i.e. positive and negative electric 
charges) ; we realize that no manifestations of 
unexpected power are per se incredible; and we 
are indeed rather inclined to wonder how it is 
that these great inter-atomic energies do not more 
often force themselves on our attention! 

It is evident that any such condition of being 
as we have supposed in the case of the 'inner' 
or 'spiritual' body, might afford means for the 
liberation — even from a single atom — of forces 
amply sufficient for the most 'miraculous' phe- 
nomena; and we are led to wonder and to ask 
whether it may not be the case that, after all, 
our gross bodies are really a hindrance rather 
than a help — whether it may not be true that 
the powers we could exert without them and in- 
dependently of muscles and sinews and hands 
and feet would be far greater than those we 
actually do exert by means of these organs and 
appendages; whether, in fact, our gross bodies 
do not exercise a limiting effect, confining our 
activities to certain very clearly specified direc- 
tions, and within certain very definite bounds? 
At any rate, this point of view is worth con- 
sidering. 

Certainly the well-established facts of telep- 
athy, and the equally well-established facts of 
the projection of phantoms from persons dying, 



2IO THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

or passing through great danger, to friends even 
at a great distance, seem to show that the inner 
self of one person can send out rays or in some 
way impress itself on the inner self of another 
far-off person; 1 and this, under the theory of 
electrons moving at prodigious speed, seems not 
impossible. For though there is a difficulty in 
supposing ordinary physical vibrations or radia- 
tions to reach effectively from one person to an- 
other (say a thousand miles away) on account of 
the law of space itself, which makes such radia- 
tions diminish in intensity as the square of the dis- 
tance increases, yet in the case of electrical radia- 
tions it seems possible to suppose two people re- 
lated to each other as positive and negative poles 
— in which case the radiations of electric charges 
would pass along lines connecting the two, and 
with comparatively little loss of intensity. Our 
present rather crude and lumbering bodies prob- 
ably impede these subtle exertions of force; and 
the fact (already noted once or twice) of the 
greater activity of people in the telepathic or 
phantasmogenetic directions, when they are them- 
selves outwardly in a dying or exhausted condi- 
tion, seems to point to a considerable liberation of 
these powers after death. 

On the other hand, the well-established facts 
of perceptivity at a great distance, or without 
the mediation of the gross body and the usual 

1 For cases of hypnotic trance induced in one person by the 
telepathic action of another person at a distance, see Myers, 
op. cit., p. 160. 



ON THE MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS 2 1 1 

end-organs, point in the same direction. Con- 
siderable investigations have been made in this 
subject; and not only is the evidence for occa- 
sional clairvoyance at a distance well established, 
but there are curious cases in which the faculty 
of sight or of hearing seems to be transferred 
from its natural organ to some other part of 
the body, as of seeing with the knee, or the 
stomach, or the finger-tips. Myers gives con- 
siderable attention to this subject, and thinks that 
Professor Fontan's experiments 1 "cannot lightly 
be set aside"; while Lombroso quotes an hysteri- 
cal patient of his own, a girl of fourteen, who 
lost the sight of her eyes, but was able to read 
perfectly with the lobe of her left ear! Later 
on, in the same patient, the sense of smell 
concentrated itself in the heel of her foot! Mrs. 
Piper, as is well known, commonly raises her 
hand for the sitter to speak into, as if it were 
her ear. And in cases of somnambulism the 
sleepwalker will sometimes move securely through 
difficult or dangerous places with eyes absolutely 
closed. All these things seem to point to an 
aboriginal power of perception independent of 
the end-organs. It is obvious that if in the course 
of evolution our present faculties of sight, 
hearing, and so forth have been developed from 
the diffused sensitivity of an amoeba or some such 
creature, then those faculties must have ex- 
isted, in their undifferentiated state, in the 
amoeba; or, to put the matter another way, 
1 Revue Philosophique, August, 1887. 



212 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

the faculty of sight clearly does not reside in 
the cornea of the eye, or in the crystalline lens, 
or even in the retina itself; which are merely an 
apparatus evolved for dealing with the details of 
the matter. The retina catches the light- 
disturbance, and the optic nerve conveys it to 
the brain, and the brain-cells are agitated by it; 
but where does sight come in? At some point, 
doubtless, the agitations of the brain-cells or 
of their internal molecules are seen and inter- 
preted; but the being that sees and interprets 
them may (we had almost said must) be capable 
of directly seeing and interpreting similar agita- 
tions in the outer world — that is, it may or must 
by its nature be capable of seeing the events of 
the outer world without the mediation of the 
end-organs or the brain. Frederick Myers, deal- 
ing with this subject, says: — "I start from the 
thesis that the perceptive power within us pre- 
cedes and is independent of the specialized sense- 
organs, which it has developed for earthly use. 
'It is the mind that sees and the mind that hears, 
the other things are blind and deaf.' " 1 He 
thinks that in the development or unfolding of 
life on our planet "certain sensibilities got them- 
selves defined and stereotyped upon the organism 
by the evolution of end-organs. Others failed to 
get thus externalized; but may, for aught we 
know, persist nevertheless in the central organs." 2 

1 Myers, op. rib., p. 149. 

2 Ibid., p. 144. See also Henri Bergson's L'Evolution Cria- 
trice, p. 102, on the canalization, of the senses, 



ON THE MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS 213 

It is evident — however we may explain the mat- 
ter — that activities and sensibilities do persist and 
manifest themselves in the human organism quite 
independent of the ordinary and stereotyped end- 
organs, and this fact must go far to persuade us, 
not only that there is an inner, a more subtle, and 
a more durable body than that which we 
usually recognize, but that in some respects 
this latter body is a limitation and a hindrance 
to the activity of the former, and to the 
swiftness and range of the perceptions of the 
soul. 

What, then, it will naturally be asked, is the ob- 
ject or purpose or use of our incarnation in this 
grosser body? — why, if there is such an ethereal 
or spiritual frame within, should it thus tend to 
accrete denser particles upon itself and ulti- 
mately to clothe itself in a vesture of so 
opaque and material a nature? It would be 
rash to attempt to answer so profound a 
question offhand — off one's own bat as it were; 
and still more rash perhaps to accept any of the 
ready-made answers which are offered in such 
profusion, and in so many different jargons and 
lingos, by the sects and schools, from the Gnos- 
tics and Theosophists to the most philistine of 
the chapels and churches. Yet if one may venture 
a suggestion, it would seem rather likely that 
the object and purpose and use of this process 
by which the soul is entangled in matter, and 
its operation and perception so strangely ham- 



214 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

pered and limited, is — limitation; that limitation 
itself and even hindrance are part and parcel of 
the great scheme of the soul's deliverance. But 
the further consideration of this I will defer to a 
later chapter. 1 

1 See chapter xiii. p. 243. 



CHAPTER XII 

REINCARNATION 

There is a good deal of talk indulged in, on 
the subject of Reincarnation — talk of a rather 
cheap character. One does not quite see what 
is the use of saying that the ego will be reincar- 
nated again some day, unless one has some sort 
of idea what one means by the ego, and unless 
one has some understanding of the sense in 
which the word "reincarnation" is used. If it 
is meant that your local and external self, approxi- 
mately as you and your friends know it to-day — 
including dress, facial outline, professional skill, 
accomplishments, habits of mind and body, in- 
terests and enthusiasms — is going to repeat itself 
again in five or five hundred years, or has already 
appeared in this form in the past; one can only 
say "impossible!" and "I trust not!" For all 
these things depend on date, locality, heredity, 
surrounding institutions, social habits, current mo- 
rality, and so forth, which — though they have 
certainly played their part in the spirit's growth 
— must infallibly be different at any other period 
(short of the whole universe repeating itself). 
And anyhow to have them repeated again da 
capo at some future time would be terribly dull. 

215 



2l6 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

But if you say "Of course I don't mean anything 
so silly as that" it becomes incumbent on you 
to say what you do mean. 

Supposing, for instance, you had been planked 
down a baby in the Arabian desert, and grown 
up to maturity or middle age there, instead 
of where you are, would any of your present- 
day friends recognize you? Where would be 
your charming piano-playing, your excellent 
cricket, your rather sloppy water-color painting, 
your up-to-dateness in the theatrical world? 
Where your morality (with three wives of 
course) or your religion (something about 
"Christian dogs"), or where your British sang 
froid and impeccability? And if it is obvious that 
in such a case as this you would, owing to the 
changed conditions, be changed out of all recogni- 
tion, much more — one might say — would this be 
the case if you had been born five hundred years 
ago, or were to be born again five hundred years 
hence. Your whole outlook on life, and its whole 
impress on you, would be different. 

Of course I am not meaning, by these remarks, 
to say that reincarnation is in itself impossible 
or absurd; that would be prejudging the question. 
All I mean at present is that if we are going 
to study this subject, or theorize upon it, it 
is really necessary to define in some degree the 
terms which we use. I do not say that you, 
the reader, might not be reincarnated, but I 
think it is clear that if you were, we should have 
a good deal of trouble in following and find- 



REINCARNATION 217 

ing you ! It is clear that the you, so reap- 
pearing, would not be your well-known local and 
external self, but some deep nucleus, difficult per- 
haps for your best friend to recognize, and 
possibly even unknown or unrecognized by your- 
self at present. And similarly of some friend 
that you love for a thousand little tricks and 
ways. We all have such friends, and at times 
cherish a sentimental romance of their being 
restored to us in some future aeon habited in their 
old guise and with their well-worn frocks and 
coats. But surely it is no good playing at hide- 
and-seek like that. The common difficulties about 
the conventional heaven — the difficulty about 
meeting your old friend who used to be so good 
at after-dinner stories, about meeting him 
with a harp in his hand and sitting on a 
damp cloud — is no whit the less a difficulty 
whatever future world may be the rendezvous. 
He would be changed (externally) and we should 
be changed, and it might well happen that if 
we did seem to recall any former intimacy we 
should both feel like strangers, and be as shy 
and tentative in our approaches to each other as 
school-children. 

What do we mean by the letter "I"? and 
what do we mean by the word Reincarnation? 
These two questions wait for a reply. 

The first is a terribly difficult question. It 
lies (though neglected by the philosophers them- 
selves) at the root of all philosophy. Perhaps 
really all life and experience are nothing but an 



2l8 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

immense search for the answer. What do we 
mean by the Ego? It is a sort of fundamental 
question, which it might be supposed would pre- 
cede all other questions, but which as a mat- 
ter of fact seems to be postponed to all 
others, and is the last to be solved. All we 
can at the outset be sure of in the way of answer 
is the enormous extent and depth of the 
being we are setting out to define. We 
sometimes think of the ego as a mere point 
of consciousness, or we think of the ordinary 
self of daily life as a fragile and ephemeral 
entity bounded by a few bodily tissues and 
a few mental views and habits. But even 
the slight discussion of the subject in former 
chapters of this book (chapters vi., vii., and 
so forth) has revealed to us the vast under- 
lying stores and faculties which must be 
included — the wonderful powers of memory, 
the subtle capacities of perception at a dis- 
tance, or without the usual organs of sight 
and hearing, the power of creating images 
out of the depths of one's mind, and of 
impressing them telepathically upon others, 
the faculty of clairvoyance in past and future 
time, and so forth. The more we try to fathom 
this ego, with which we supposed ourselves so 
familiar, the more we are amazed at its laby- 
rinthine profundity, and the more we are as- 
tonished to think that we should ever have 
ventured to limit it to such a petty formula and 
conventional symbol as we commonly do — not 



REINCARNATION 2 1 9 

only in our judgment of friends, but even in our 
estimate of ourselves. 

Reincarnation, as we have already said, can 
hardly be the reappearance, in a new life on 
earth (or even in some other sphere), of the very 
local and superficial traits which we know so well 
in ourselves and our friends — which are mainly 
a response to local and superficial conditions, and 
which mainly constitute what we call our per- 
sonalities. If reincarnation does occur, it 
must obviously consist in the reappearance or 
remanifestation of some such very interior self 
as we have just spoken of — some deep individu- 
ality (as opposed to personality), some divine 
aeonian soul, some offshoot perhaps of an age- 
long enduring Race-soul, or World-self — and in 
that sort of sense only shall I use the word in 
future. . 

In that sense the idea is feasible and illumina- 
tive. It explains the obvious limitations and 
localism of our personalities, as being more or 
less passing and temporary embodiments of our 
true selves; and it represents the latter as im- 
mense storehouses of experience from all manner 
of places and times, and similarly as centres of 
world-activity operating in different fields of time 
and space. At the same time, it presents various 
difficulties. For one thing, it poses the difficulty 
that for each of us this vast interior being 
is, as a rule, so deeply buried that both one- 
self and one's friends are only faintly conscious 
— if at all — of its true outline. And if one does 



220 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

not recognize this being, of what use is it to us? 
It is true that we sometimes meet people who at 
first sight give us a strong impression of far-back 
intimacy; but this is only a vague impression and 
hardly sufficient to afford proof of pre-existence. 
The only way of meeting this difficulty seems to 
be to suppose, as residing in this inner being or 
true self, another order of consciousness, faint 
intimations of which we even now have, and by 
which, as it grows and develops, we may some 
day clearly recognize our true selves and true 
nature. 

Another difficulty is that (as already said) for 
any satisfactory sense of survival continuity of 
memory is needed; and we should have to suppose 
that the memory of each earth-life was continued 
into and stored up in this deeper soul or aeonian 
self. Memory would not normally pass from 
one embodiment or incarnation to another, but 
each stream would flow into the central self and 
there be stored. And I think we may admit that 
this is by no means impossible. Indeed there 
are not a few facts (some already mentioned) 
with regard to the recovery of memory which 
make the mater probable. Though any given 
earth-life in a given form could not be repeated, 
the memory of such an earth-life, fresh and clear, 
may survive for an indefinite time in the crystal 
mirror of the deeper consciousness. 1 And it is 

1 It seems probable, from many considerations, that at a 
certain depth within us — in the region of what has been called 
the cosmic consciousness — memory does in nowise fade, and 



REINCARNATION 221 

perhaps allowable to suppose that in this way, 
and with the lifting of the opaque veil of our 
present consciousness, we may some day come 
clearly into the presence of friends we have lost. 
Here again, however, one has to be on one's 
guard. The mere fact of remembering (or think- 
ing one remembers), in this our terrestrial life 
and with our terrestrial consciousness, some de- 
tail or other of a previous terrestrial life proves 
little — for, for aught we know, quite apart from 
our psychic selves, a streak of memory of more 
physical origin from some ancestor may have 
come down even several generations, and may 
be surviving in one's brain. 1 Indeed it is ex- 
tremely probable that all organic matter carries 
memory with it, and not unlikely that inorganic 
matter does so too. If you thought, for instance, 
that you remembered seeing Charles the First 
beheaded — if you had a rather distinct picture in 
your mind of the scene at Whitehall, which you 
afterwards found by investigation to be corrobo- 
rated in its details, you might at first jump to the 
conclusion that you had really lived at that time, 
and witnessed the scene. But after all it might 
merely be that an ancestor of yours had been 

the past is always present, but, as Bergson says, the ordinary 
conscious intellect tends to only select from this mass what is 
needed for impending action, and has consequently become 
limited by this tendency. 

1 See the work of Richard Semon on the rnneme as a main 
factor of organic life {Die Mneme als erhaltendes Prinzip im 
Wechsel des org arils clien Oeschehens, Leipzig, 1904) ; also 
quoted by Auguste Forel, The Sexual Question (English edi- 
tion, Rebman, 1908), pp. 14-17. 



22 2 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

there, and that the vividly impressed picture had 
somehow persevered in some subterranean chan- 
nel of memory and emerged again in your mind. 
Even then you might contend that, since it was 
your memory, you must have been there — or at 
any rate some fraction of yourself in the ancestor, 
which now has become incorporated in your per- 
sonality. There are a good many stories of this 
kind going about, which point to the possibility 
of the transmission of shreds of remembrance 
through hereditary channels, and suggest the idea 
of an active Race-memory, or Earth-memory, in 
itself continuous — a storehouse of experiences, 
but fed continually by the individuals of the race, 
and coruscating forth again in other individuals. 1 
Indeed one can hardly withhold belief in the 
existence of such a larger life, or identity, 'rein- 
carnated' if one likes to use the expression, in 
thousands or millions of individuals; but to be 
satisfactorily assured of the reincarnation of one 
distinct and individual person is another thing, 
and would almost demand that there should be 
forthcoming not only shreds and streaks of re- 
membrance, but a pretty continuous and con- 
sistent memory of a whole former life. 

Thus the whole question which we are discuss- 
ing is baffled and rendered the more complex by 
the doubt as to what is meant by the word "I." 
It is clear, from what we have already said, that 
one person may use it to indicate ( i ) the quite 
local and superficial self; while another may have 
1 See An Adventure, Macmillan & Co., 1911. 



REINCARNATION 223 

in mind (2) a much profounder being (the under- 
lying self) whose depths and qualities we have by 
no means fathomed; while others, again, may be 
thinking (3) of the self of the Race or the Earth, 
or (4) the All-self of the universe. 

I present these questions and doubts, not — as I 
have said — for the purpose of discrediting the 
possibility of Reincarnation, but by way of show- 
ing how complex and difficult the problem is, and 
how much some exact thought and definition is 
needed in dealing with it. At the same time, in 
pleading for exact thought I would also urge that 
in avoiding the whirlpools of sentimentalism we 
should be careful not to fall upon the rocks of a 
dry and barren formalism. Systems of hard and 
fast doctrines on these subjects — even though is- 
sued with all the authority of ancient tradition, 
and enunciated in a long-dead jargon — are the 
most unfruitful and uninspiring of things. They 
seem to contain no germ of vitality and are liable 
to paralyze the mind that feeds upon them. Be- 
sides the drawback — as I have pointed out before 
— that all such systems are inevitably false. Na- 
ture does not, in any department, work upon a 
cut-and-dried system; and while at the outset of 
an investigation we often seem to discern some- 
thing of that kind, further study invariably dis- 
closes an astounding variety of order and method. 
It may be well therefore to be prepared to find 
a general principle of Reincarnation in operation 
in the world, but worked out, in actual fact, in 
a great variety of ways. 



2 24 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

Certainly there comes into our minds, at a 
certain grade of their development, a deep per- 
suasion of the truth, in some sense, of reincarna- 
tion — that "the Soul that rises with us, our life's 
Star, hath had elsewhere its setting." It blos- 
soms, this persuasion, in a curious way, in the very 
depths of the mind; and in moments of inner 
illumination, or deep feeling, is discerned in a 
way that seems to leave no room for doubt. At 
the same time, it not only has this intuitive sanc- 
tion, but it commends itself also to the intellect, 
because at a certain stage we perceive very clearly 
both how vast is the whole curve of progress 
which the soul has to cover from its first birth 
to its final liberation, and how tiny is the arc 
represented by a single lifetime — the two 
thoughts almost compelling us to believe in a suc- 
cession of lives as the only explanation or solution. 
We are compelled towards a practical belief in 
Reincarnation, and yet (as above) we have to 
confess that our conception of what it really is, or 
what we mean by it, is only vague. This, how- 
ever, is no more than what happens in a hundred 
other cases. The young bird starts building a nest 
for the first time, driven by some strange instinct 
to do so, and yet it can only have a very dim 
notion of the meaning and uses the nest will sub- 
serve when finished. And we found our lives on 
deep intuitions — of social solidarity, of personal 
responsibility, of free will, and so forth— and yet 
it is only later and by degrees that we learn what 
these things actually mean. 



REINCARNATION 225 

Referring, then, to the four alternative forms 
of the self given two or three pages back, and 
taking the last first, we may say definitely, I think, 
that as far as the self of each one of us is identi- 
fied (4) with the All-self of the universe, its re- 
incarnation is assured. Its reincarnation in- 
deed is perpetual, inexhaustible, multitudinous 
beyond words, filling all space and time. Though 
the consciousness of this self is deeply buried, 
yet it is there, in each one of us. Occasionally — 
if even only for a moment — it rises to the surface, 
bringing a sense of splendor and of joy inde- 
scribable — the absolute freedom and password of 
all creation, the recognition of oneself every- 
where and in all forms. But this phase of the 
self — I need hardly say — is for the most part 
hidden; and more common is it perhaps for the 
Race-self (3) to rise into our consciousness with 
more or less distinct assurance that we live again 
and are re-embodied in other members of the race 
to which we belong. The common life of the race 
carries us away and overmasters us with a strange 
sense of identity and community of being. 
Heroisms and devotions — as of men dying for 
their country, or bees for their hive — spring from 
this; and superb intoxications of joy. The whole 
of the life of primitive races and tribes, and the 
life of the animals and insects, illustrates it — in 
warfares, migrations, crusades, frantic enthusiasms, 
mad festivals — the genius of the race rushing on 
from point to point, inspiring its children, incarnat- 
ing itself without end in successive individuals. 



2 26 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

It is not so uncommon, I say, for us to be able 
to identify ourselves with this great Race-self, 
and to feel its thrill and pulse within our veins. 
And it might well be thought that, with these 
two forms of reincarnation (3) and (4) and the 
immense joy they bring, we should be content: 
even as all the tribes of the animals and the 
angels are content. 

But it seems that man — when the civilization- 
period sets in, and after that — is not content. 
The little individual soul, now first coming to 
the consciousness of its own separateness, sets up 
a claim for an immortality and a reincarnation of 
its very own — apart from the Race-self, apart 
even from the Divine self. It demands that its 
ego should continue indefinitely into the farthest 
fields of Time — a separate entity, perpetually re- 
embodied. Can such a claim — in the light of 
what has been said above — be possibly conceded? 

Certainly not. We have seen the absurdity 
of supposing that the local and superficial self 
(1) can ever recur again or be re-embodied in 
that form, except as a mere matter of memory 
(or possibly of a repetition of the whole universal 
order). And as to the underlying self (2), what- 
ever exactly it may be, there are a thousand 
reasons for seeing that as a wholly separate entity 
the same must be true of that. I may refer the 
reader to The Art of Creation, the whole argu- 
ment of which is to show that even the mere at- 
tempt to think of itself as a separate entity in- 
volves the human soul in hopeless confusion and 



REINCARNATION 227 

disintegration; and I may remind the reader that 
we know nothing in the whole universe which is 
thus separate and apart, and that the conception, 
whether from a physical point of view or a psy- 
chological point of view, is impossible to main- 
tain. That being so, there remains only to con- 
sider the possibility of the underlying self or 
individual soul being re-embodied — not as an ab- 
solutely separate entity, but as affiliated to some 
greater Life which shall afford the basis of suc- 
cessive incarnations. The problem is narrowed 
down, practically to the question whether the in- 
dividual may not obtain some kind of individual 
reincarnation through the Race-self, or possibly 
through the All-self of the universe. 

And here I will state what I personally think 
and believe about this problem, leaving the rea- 
sons for the present to commend themselves. I 
think that in the early stages — in animal and 
primitive human life — the Race-self is par- 
amount; that each individual self proceeds from 
it, in much the same way as a bud proceeds from 
the stem of a growing plant, or even as a 
single cell forms part of the tissue of the 
stem; and is absorbed into it again at death. 
There are no individual and death-surviving 
souls produced, apart from the Race-soul. In 
the great race or family of bunny-rabbits, for 
instance — though there are certainly individual 
differences of character — just as there are differ- 
entiations of tissue-cells in the stem of a plant — 
it is difficult to believe that there are individual 



22 8 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

and immortal souls. Each little self springs from 
the race, and is an embodiment of it, represent- 
ing in various degree its characteristics; and at 
death — in some way which we do not yet quite 
understand * — returns thither, yielding its experi- 
ences to the stores of the race-experience. The 
same is probably true of the great mass of the 
higher animals, even up to the primitive and 
earliest Man. The Race-self in all these cases 
moves onward, upgathering the experiences of 
the individuals, wise with their united knowledge, 
and rich with their countless memories. And 
these tracts again, of experience, knowledge and 
memory, largely in a vague and generalized form, 
but sometimes in sharp, individualized and de- 
tailed form, are transmitted from the Race-self to 
its later individuals and offshots. Thus a kind 
of broken reincarnation occurs, by which streaks 
of memory and habit pass down time from one 
individual to another, and by which perhaps — in 
us later races — the persistent 'intimations of im- 
mortality' and persuasions of having lived before 
are accounted for. 

I think that this process, of mixed and broken 
reincarnation, may go on for countless genera- 
tions — the animal or animal-human souls so dif- 
ferentiated from the race-soul returning contin- 
ually to the latter at death. But that a period 
may come when the Race-self (illustrated by the 
growing plant-stem) may exhibit distinct buds — 

a See infra, ch. xiv. p. 255; also E. B. Wilson, The Cell, p. 
433. 



REINCARNATION 229 

the embryos, as it were, of independent souls — 
which will not return and be lost again in the 
race-soul, but will persevere for a long period and 
continually attain to more differentiation and in- 
ternal coherence and sense of identity. In such 
cases any reincarnations that occur connected with 
these buds — though mingled with the race-life — 
will become much less broken than before, and 
more distinctly individual; till at last a phase is 
reached when such a soul-bud, almost detached 
from the race-life, may be reincarnated (or let 
us say 're-embodied') as a separate entity, with a 
kind of immortality of its own. 

It must be at this stage that the characteristic 
human soul of the Civilization-period is evolved 
— which coheres quite firmly round itself, which 
protests and revolts against death, which even 
largely throws off its allegiance to the race-soul, 
and to the laws and solidarities of the race-life, 
and which has an enormous and overweening 
sense of identity and self-importance, claiming 
for itself, as I have just said, a kind of separate 
persistence. Here ensues, as may be imagined, 
a terrible period of confusion and trouble — the 
whole period of competitive civilization. The 
splendid claim of identity and immortality is 
made; but for the time being it is spoiled by 
what we call 'selfishness,' the mirror is cracked 
through ignorance. The Soul has disowned her 
allegiance to mere instinct and the race-self, and 
has yet not found a firm footing beyond — is only 
floundering in the bogs of self-consciousness and 



23O THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

anxiety. What kind of Re-embodlment may 
belong to this period we shall best perhaps see 
when we have considered the further course of 
the argument. 

For at last the process of transition completes 
itself. The human soul tossed about beyond en- 
durance at length discovers within itself a divine 
Nucleus — a nucleus of growth and life and refuge 
and security, apart from its own fragility, quite 
apart from the race-life, independent of all the 
latter's laws and conventions and sanctions and 
traditions, independent of caste or color, of 
world-period or locality; and from that mo- 
ment it (the soul) rests; it ceases (like the 
little rose of Jericho) from its desert wander- 
ings; it radiates itself and begins to grow from 
a new centre; it is born again; it becomes the be- 
ginning of what may be called a Divine Soul. 
The man becomes conscious of an ethereal body 
forming within, unassailable or at least undestroy- 
able by Death; and it is probable that, during 
this period, the subtle organism which we have 
already termed the Inner or Spiritual Body 
(ch. x.) is actually forming and defining and, so 
to speak, consolidating itself. The subtle body of 
a more perfect being is forming — a body which 
can pass unharmed through walls, fire, water, 
which can navigate the air and the planetary 
spaces, and which is built on the basis of the ether, 
itself the all-pervading life-substance of creation. 
A divine soul is coming to expression, an ego 
indeed, marvellously different and distinct from 



REINCARNATION 23 1 

all other egos, and ever more majestic and unique 
growing; but rooted deep in the universal self, 
and ever from that root expanding and sharing 
the life of that self and of all its children. 

With the formation of this divine soul, re- 
embodiment in its complete and adequate sense 
commences. The spiritual or subtle body formed 
within the gross body retains its characteristics 
after the death of the latter (many of which 
characteristics no doubt hardly gained expression 
in the one life just ended) — and passes on to other 
spheres, there to assume more or less definitely 
material bodies according to the sphere and the 
conditions in which it may need to move. It may 
seek re-embodiment on earth through ordinary 
heredity and childbirth — in which case presum- 
ably it enters into the growing germ, and moulds 
the development of the latter to an adequate, 
if not to a quite perfect and unsullied, ex- 
pression of itself. If the reincarnation is to 
be into ordinary human and terrestrial life, this 
is probably the only available method. And it 
would seem that some advanced and well-nigh 
perfect souls do adopt this method, appear- 
ing as infants with a kind of divinity about 
them, and a germinal purity so great as to 
seem to proceed from an 'immaculate con- 
ception.' 

But to most, in this stage, the toil and tedium 
of passing through embryonic life and physical 
birth and infancy may well appear intolerable; 
and since by now they have developed the subtle 



232 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

or spiritual body and the powers belonging to it, 
this ordeal is no longer necessary. The subtle 
body can — as we have gathered from former 
chapters — by a process of condensation clothe 
itself in a visible or even tangible vesture, 1 and 
may function, at any rate for a time, in such outer 
or apparitional form without going through all 
the abracadabra of birth. If on the earth, such 
functioning can only be very temporary, owing 
to the difficulty here of the conditions, and of 
the supply of the necessary condensation-material; 
but in other and less ponderous spheres the diffi- 
culty is probably much less, and the formation 
of suitable bodies comparatively easy. Anyhow, 
it will be seen that reincarnation of this second 
kind is unitary and single in character instead of 
being divided or fragmentary; it is unalloyed in- 
stead of being broken and mixed; 2 and a vision 
rises before us, in connection with it, of 
ever-growing forms and more perfect life- 
embodiments carrying out, one after another in 
long succession, the evolution and expression of 
each divine soul or separate ray of universal 
being. 

Thus in answer to query two, on an early page 
of this chapter, we may say that there are two 
kinds of reincarnation proper — quite different 
from each other: — (1) That of the race-self 

1 Though this process, it would appear, requires practice, 
and is not learned at once. 

2 See the frequent description of the unusual beauty and 
radiancy of the forms seen in connection with trance-mediums 
and circles. 



REINCARNATION 233 

in which the individual members of the race share 
only in a streaky fashion, each going back at death 
into the race-soul, and emptying its memories and 
experiences into that soul for general sporadic 
inheritance, but not for transmission in mass to 
any one later individual; and (2) that of the 
individual who has found his divine soul and 
evolved his inner body to a point where it can- 
not be broken up again; and who is thus rein- 
carnated or re-embodied complete through suc- 
cessive materializations or condensations, in other 
spheres and without again undergoing the ordi- 
nary race-birth and death. 

But though these two represent the normal 
forms of reincarnation, a third kind should be 
added which represents the transition from one 
to the other, and which is important for us be- 
cause it mainly covers the period in which we 
now are — the great period of civilization. We 
saw how the soul of the animal is so close to 
the race-self, and so little differentiated from it, 
that it probably returns quite easily into the race- 
self at death; and this is likely to be the same 
with very early or primitive man. But when the 
distinctly human soul begins to form and to shape 
itself, it does not so easily forget its individuality 
and obliterate itself in that from which it sprang. 
And so we have the tentative, half-formed hu- 
man soul, by no means well assured of itself, or 
certain of its own powers, and by no means per- 
fect or contented, but much persuaded of its own 
importance and anxiously seeking reincarnation 



234 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

as a separate entity — and seeking this by 
the only means available to it, i.e. through 
heredity and birth as a member of the 
race. 

It is a painful situation and experience. The 
soul, as human and not animal soul, is longing 
to separate itself from the race, to mark its dis- 
tinction and independence — yet it has not, so far, 
found the divine nucleus which alone can give it 
real independence; and it can only gain expres- 
sion and manifestation through the race-self 
and the ordinary paraphernalia of birth and 
death. It has learned no other way. Moreover, 
it is not yet completely differentiated from the 
race-self. It thus arrives at what can only be 
a very mingled and broken expression. Some 
father-stream and some mother-stream uniting, 
as it were, in the psychological neighborhood of 
this half-formed soul give it the desired op- 
portunity; and blending itself with them it 
comes down into the world — a being of triple 
nature, embryonic and incompletely formed in it- 
self, and utilizing as best it can the diverse ele- 
ments of its maternal and paternal sources. Its 
career, consequently, and its life on earth are 
marked by a continual inner struggle and con- 
flict — both physiological and psychological (due 
to the effort of the soul to bend the race-life and 
the elements of corporeal heredity to its own 
uses), and in strange contrast both with the 
hardihood and calm insouciance of the ani- 
mals, in whom the race-life is untampered, 



REINCARNATION 235 

and with the transparent health and serenity of 
those other beings in whom the divine soul has 
finally established its sovereignty. 

Such, briefly described, are I believe the out- 
lines of the reincarnation story. To put it in a 
few words, the whole process by which the race- 
self evolves and finally gives birth to myriads 
of free, independent and deathless individuals 
curiously resembles and may well be illustrated 
by a certain biological phenomenon common both 
in the vegetable and the animal worlds. Some 
growing stem or portion of tissue, perhaps of a 
plant, perhaps of a sponge or higher organism, 
is at first of a simple homogeneous character, 
fairly uniform and undifferentiated: but after a 
time it exhibits knobs and inequalities, which 
presently define themselves in a sort of botryoidal 
or clustered bud-like growth (as, for instance, in 
the spadix of an arum or the ovary of a 
mammal) ; finally these knobs or buds become 
entirely distinct and fully formed, and are thrown 
off 'free/ as seeds (in the case of plants and 
animals), or gemmules (in the case of sponges), 
or spores (in ferns and mosses), or as fresh and 
complete individuals in many aquatic creatures — 
in any case to enter on the beginnings of a free 
and independent life of their own. This kind 
of process, anyhow, is found in every department 
of biology, and it may well be that it extends 
upward even into the highest domains. The 
growing stem — proliferating cells without num- 
ber, which are born and die in a kind of even uni- 



236 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

formity within the limits of the stem — corre- 
sponds to the race-self in its early stages; the for- 
mation of knobs and buds in various degrees of 
clustered development corresponds to the partial 
growth of human souls out of the race-soul; and 
the liberation of the buds and germs corresponds 
to the liberation of the human souls into the free- 
dom of a universal life. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE DIVINE SOUL 

The liberation of buds and germs, as in the bi- 
ological processes alluded to in the last chapter, 
is in general connected with sex, and brought 
about by its operation. And, similarly, I think 
we may say that the liberation of human souls 
and their disengagement from the race-matrix is 
brought about by love. I have already pointed 
out (ch. ix.) the intensely personal and individual- 
izing character of human love. If one can 
imagine a love-relation going on between two 
members of a race — two portions, as it were, of 
the race-soul — at present only slightly individual- 
ized, one can see how the attraction to each other, 
the drawing away from their surroundings, the 
excitement, the agitation, all tend to further their 
growth as individuals — to give them form, apart 
from the matrix in which they are embedded, 
and definition and character. Of course all ex- 
perience does this, but most of all and most deeply 
does love. It breeds souls out of the Race- 
self, and finally brings them away to an independ- 
ent life. "It is for this that the body exercises 
its tremendous attraction — that mortal love tor- 
ments and tears asunder the successive gen- 

237 



238 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

erations of mankind — That underneath and after 
all the true men and women may appear, by long 
experience emancipated.' , 

As said in an early chapter, in love, though 
we do not know exactly what is happening, we 
are persuaded that something very profound and 
far-reaching is working itself out. And one such 
thing, I am sure, is the liberation of the soul of 
the lover — and, in less degree, the soul of the 
loved one. The tremendous experiences and con- 
vulsions, the profound stirrings, and the wrench- 
ings from old ties and associations, do at last not 
only build the soul up into a distinct individuality, 
but they dig it up from its roots in the race 
and plant it out in the great Eden garden 
of emancipated humanity — the beginning of a 



new career. 1 



Another thing that I think is happening is 
that when love is strongly reciprocated the 
elements (as we have seen several times already), 
whether physical or psychical, pass over from 
one to the other and are interchanged — regenera- 
ting and immensely enlarging the life and capacity 
of each individual. This happens, I believe, in 
all grades of the universal life, from the Protozoa 

1 It may easily be understood, I think, that the process by 
which the distinct soul is thus built up may last several life- 
times. That is, there may be a long period during which the 
budding soul still entangled in the race-life may be reincar- 
nated jointly with the race-soul in a kind of mixed way — fam- 
ily and race-characteristics mingling with and obscuring its 
expression — though these incarnations would become ever less 
mixed and more individual in character till the day of the 
soul's final disentanglement. 



THE DIVINE SOUL 239 

upwards. Two individuals drawn together inter- 
change some elements of their being, and grow 
thereby into a larger and grander life; or may 
even in cases fuse completely into one individual 
person. As Swedenborg says somewhere : — 
"Those who are truly married on earth are in 
heaven one Angel." 

Thirdly, I think that the reciprocated love of 
two sometimes creates a new soul. We are fa- 
miliar with the idea that the love (sexual) 
of two bodies commonly creates a new body; 
and there is an age-long tradition that the same is 
true in the world of souls. There is in that 
world also, not only regeneration but generation. 
u Love is the desire of generation in the beauti- 
ful, both with relation to the soul and the body" 
says Plato ; x and Ellen Key, in a passage already 
quoted above (ch. iv., p. 61), says that u two 
beings through one another may become a new 
being, and a greater than either could be of itself 
alone." By love a new soul is sometimes gen- 
erated which takes possession of both persons, 
and which suggests — as in the Swedenborg phrase 
above — that in some other sphere they really be- 
come one. And by love, we may also think, be- 
tween man and wife, a new soul or soul-bud is 
sometimes created, which may descend into and 
vivify the physical germ of their future child. 

To consider this last point a moment. The 
connection between heredity and the individual 
self is very mysterious. We acknowlelge our 
1 In the Symposium — Shelley's translation. 



24O THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

descent, and what we owe, both mentally and 
bodily, to our parentage; but we are fain to 
think of our ego as something apart, something 
not to be confused with parents, and by no means 
merely derivative from them. Sometimes in- 
deed there is great harmony between this ego 
and the parental inheritance, sometimes much the 
reverse; sometimes the line between the two is 
doubtful and uncertain. What is the explanation 
of all this? and what are the true facts of the 
relationship? 

Does it not seem likely that, in the intense or- 
ganic excitement which attends sexual union, this 
excitement — especially if strong love be also 
present — reaches right down into the soul-depths 
of each person, stirring these also, and the race 
oversoul at that point, most profoundly? So that, 
at the same moment that the germ of a bod- 
ily child is being fertilized, there is formed 
in the race-soul a soul-bud corresponding, which 
consequently descends into the physical germ and 
becomes its organizing life — the soul-bud thus 
being related to the souls of the parents, some- 
what as the physical germ is related to their 
bodies? It springs, in fact, from a related por- 
tion of the race-oversoul. 

Or again, does it not seem likely that in some 
cases, instead of a quite new bud being formed, 
the profound stirring of the race-life in that 
vicinity causes some older and more developed 
soul-bud — which has perhaps already had some 
earth-experiences — to wake into activity and take 



THE DIVINE SOUL 24 1 

possession of the germ? In the first case men- 
tioned the child born will be singularly like the 
parents, and in nature harmonious with them, 
with very little extraneous in its character, and 
with the fair prospect before it of a smooth and 
even career. But in this latter case, though the 
child will be harmonious with the parents it will 
have great depths beside, of authentic character 
of its own which will show out as time goes on. 

And again, if deep love be absent, and conse- 
quently there is no special birth or awakening of 
souls in that region where they should be related 
to the body which is being born — what is likely 
to happen? Is it not likely that some other soul- 
bud, or soul which chance or other indication of 
destiny may bring that way, may enter in and pos- 
sess the developing organism? And is it not 
likely, then, that strife and conflict and doubt may 
also enter in, causing a character of mixed 
elements, possibly leading to heroic developments, 
but also probably to a broken or tragic life- 
story? 

As in the earliest and most primitive develop- 
ments of life, so in the latest and most exalted, 
the soul is born through love, and through love 
it grows and expands. It may indeed be asked 
whether any other way is possible. Oppositions 
and conflicts may give form to the growing 
thing, and help to carve its outlines; but this 
gives it expansion. Every profound attachment 
necessarily modifies and enlarges the man. It 



242 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

pulls him out of his little orbit into a wider path 
— even if for the moment with some amount of 
eccentricity. Something is incorporated in his life 
which was not part of it before — something pos- 
sibly which he did not before appreciate or under- 
stand. What we now are — whether mentally or 
physically — is an epitome of multitudinous loves 
in the past. The very cell-alliances which con- 
stitute our bodies are the records of endless heart- 
yearnings and romances (dating from far-back 
ages, and even now enduring) among a tiny peo- 
ple to us well-nigh invisible. And we may ask 
ourselves whether in the regions above and be- 
yond our present life there may not be soul-alli- 
ances and even soul-fusions, by which we humans 
in our turn build up the very life of the gods? 
Plato in his Symposium, speaking of the strange 
desire of lovers for each other, makes Aristo- 
phanes say: 1 — "But the soul of each manifestly 
thirsts for, from the other, something which there 
are no words to describe, and divines that 
which it seeks, and traces obscurely the foot- 
steps of its obscure desire. If Vulcan should say 
to persons thus affected, 'My good people, what 
is it that you want with one another?' And if, 
while they were hesitating what to answer, he 
should proceed to ask — 'Do you not desire the 
closest union and singleness to exist between you, 
so that you may never be divided night or day? 
If so, I will melt you together, and make you 
grow into one, so that both in life and death ye 
1 Shelley's translation. 



THE DIVINE SOUL 243 

may be undivided. Consider, is this what you 
desire? Will it content you if you become that 
which I propose?' — We all know that no one 
would refuse such an offer, but would at once 
feel that this was what he had ever sought; and 
intimately to mix and melt and to be melted to- 
gether with his beloved, so that one should be 
made out of two." And we may think — though 
this strange and intimate longing is never fulfilled, 
as we know, in the actual earth-life — that it still 
may possibly be an indication (as happens in other 
cases) of something which really is working itself 
out in the unseen world. 

It was suggested, in the end of chapter xi. 
above, that limitation and hindrance are a part of 
the cosmic scheme of the creation of souls, an'd 
that there is a purpose in these things in regard 
to this mortal life. It was also suggested that 
the profound soul-stuff of which we are made is 
capable of infinitely swifter and more extended 
perceptions than those of which we are usually 
aware; and that there is a good deal of evidence 
to show that perceptive powers of this kind — 
quite independent of the usual end-organs of sight, 
hearing, taste, and so forth, still linger buried 
deep down within us. The question then natu- 
rally arises, If this limitation of faculty really 
exists as a fundamental fact of our mortal life, 
what purpose does it subserve? — And the answer 
to this is, I think, very clear. 

It subserves the evolution of Self-consciousness 
and of the sense of Identity. It is obvious that 



244 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

diffused faculties and perceptions, however swift 
and powerful, could never have brought these 
gifts with them. It was only by pinning sensi- 
tiveness down to a point in space and time, by 
means of a body, and limiting its perceptions by 
means of bodily end-organs, that these new values 
could be added to creation — the local self and the 
sense of Identity. All the variety of human 
and animal nature, all the endless differences of 
points of view, all diversity and charm of form 
and character and temperament must be credited 
to this principle; and whatever vagaries and de- 
lusions the consequent growth of self-conscious- 
ness and selfness may have caused, it is incon- 
testable that through the development of Identity 
mankind and all creation must ultimately rise to a 
height of glory and splendor otherwise un- 
imaginable. 

And not only limitation but also hindrance. 
These things give an intensity and passion to life, 
and a power and decisiveness to individuality, the 
absence of which would indeed be sad. As a 
water-conduit by limiting the spread of the stream 
and confining it in a close channel gives it velocity 
and force to drive the mill, so limitation and hin- 
drance in human life give the individualized 
energy from which, for good or evil, all our 
world-activities spring. As the Lord says in 
Goethe's Prologue to Faust : — 

"Of all the spirits of denial 
The mischief-maker I most tolerate, 



THE DIVINE SOUL 245 

For man's activity doth all too soon unravel; 

Of slumber he seems never satiate; 

Therefore I gladly hand him to a mate 

Who'll plague and prick, and play in fact the Devil." 

Over a long period in this cosmic process this 
action, we may think, goes on. The vast and 
pervasive soul-stuff of the universe, in its hidden 
way omniscient and omnipresent, suffers an ob- 
scuration and a limitation, and is condensed into 
a bodily prison in a point of space and time; but 
with a consequent explosive energy incalculable. 
The Devil — diabolos the slanderer and the sun- 
derer, the principle of division — reigns. To him, 
the 'milk and water 1 heaven of universal but 
vague benevolence is detestable. He builds up 
the actual, fascinating, tragic, indispensable world 
that we know. Selfishness and ignorance, the two 
great Powers of discord and separation, are his 
ministers; the earth is his theatre of convulsive 
hatreds and soul-racking passion; and our mortal 
life, instead of being the fair channel of cosmic 
activities, becomes a "stricture knot," as Whitman 
calls it, and a symbol of disease. 

But this diabolonian process is only one segment 
of the whole. After the long descent and con- 
densation and imprisonment of the spirit in its 
most limited and inert and self-regarding forms, 
after its saturation in matter, and its banishment 
in the world of death and suffering, the rising 
curve of liberation sets in, and the long process of 
its return. It is through love mainly, as we 
have seen, that this second process works it- 



246 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

self out. From point to point through unison 
with others, by absorbing something from their 
experience, by sharing a wider life, the spirit's 
manifestation grows. By this the great tree of 
organic life spreads upon the earth; by this each 
race-stem multiplies its tissues and expands; by 
this the buds of human souls are formed; and by 
this the souls themselves are freed to independent 
life, and ultimately to circle again "dancing and 
sporting" as Plutarch says, "like joyous satellites 
round about their sun in heaven." There is con- 
tinual Transformation; but there is also continuity 
from end to end. For every being there is 
continuance, but continuance only by change. 
Each soul is a gradual rising to conscious- 
ness of the All-soul; a gradual liberation and 
self-discovery of the divine germ within it. 
First the race-soul rising toward this conscious- 
ness, and then the individual souls thrown off, 
rising each independently toward the same. It 
is when the latter are moving over from their 
(instinctive and so to speak organic) community 
with the race-soul to a distinct and separate 
knowledge of and allegiance to the divine germ 
now declaring within themselves, that all this 
period of confusion and dismay, naturally enough, 
occurs — this that we have called the period of 
Civilization and the Fall of man — the period in 
which indeed we are now so fatefully involved. 
But it is in this period too that 'divine souls' 
are formed, and their feet first set upon the 
path of splendor. 



THE DIVINE SOUL 247 

Love indicates immortality. No sooner does 
the human being perceive this divine nucleus with- 
in himself than he knows his eternal destiny. 
Plunged in matter and the gross body he has 
learned the lesson of identity and separateness. 
All that the devil can teach him he has faithfully 
absorbed. Now he has to expand that identity, 
for ever unique, into ever vaster spheres of 
activity — to become finally a complete and finished 
aspect of the One. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE RETURN JOURNEY 

We have seen that there is some reason for be- 
lieving that, simultaneously with the birth or com- 
ing to consciousness of what we have called the 
divine soul, there occurs within us the formation 
of a 'spiritual' or very subtly material body. This 
body, if only composed of atoms, may easily be 
so fine and subtle as to pass practically unchanged 
through ordinary gross matter — the walls, for 
instance, and other obstacles that surround us. 
(At this moment there is an astronomical 
theory current that the stellar universe consists 
of two vast star-systems which are passing in 
nearly opposite directions right through each 
other.) If composed of electrons its subtlety and 
pervasive powers must be much greater. More- 
over, its fineness and subtlety would make it dif- 
ficult of destruction. The ordinary agents of 
death — physical violence, water, fire, and so forth 
— would, as already pointed out, hardly reach it; 
and it is easy to suppose that it might continue 
onwards and perdure in stability and activity for 
thousands of years. Even the Atom of matter, 
which is now regarded as a complex system of 
electrons, is supposed to have an immensely ex- 

248 



THE RETURN JOURNEY 249 

tended lifetime — nearly two thousand years in the 
case of Radium, and much longer in the case of 
all other substances; and if two thousand 
years or thereabouts is the minimum lifetime 
of an atom, it is not difficult to suppose that the 
lifetime of a subtle body composed as above 
described may be equally or much more ex- 
tended. 

During its lifetime, the radio-active atom, 
slowly disintegrating, pours out a prodigious 
amount of energy; and in the process apparently 
is transformed and takes on other characters and 
qualities. Radium for instance, or rather some 
products of its disintegration, are thought to take 
on the characters of Helium and of Lead. And 
similarly we have every reason to believe that the 
subtle body of Man is continually pouring out 
energy on all sides, radiating like a sun — pour- 
ing out mental states, sensible forms, influences 
of all kinds, even images of itself, and so continu- 
ally entering into a wider life and touch with 
others, and undergoing a slow transformation 
of its outer form. At the same time — and lead- 
ing to the same results — it is continually storing 
up in its recesses impressions and memories for 
the seed of future expression and development. 

It may be imagined that the gross terrestrial 
body — though splendidly necessary for the lo- 
calizing of the Self, and the establishment of the 
sense of identity, and for the electric accumulation 
of stores of emotion and passion, and so forth — 
acts on the whole in such a way as to greatly 



250 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

hamper and limit the activities of the inner body; 
and we can imagine that (as at death and under 
other special conditions) the liberation from the 
gross body is naturally accompanied by an enor- 
mous extension of faculty. The soul in its new 
and subtler form passes out into an immensely 
wider sphere of action and perception — so much 
so, indeed, as to make direct converse between the 
two worlds (the new world it is in, and the old 
one it has left) difficult to establish and very dif- 
ficult permanently to maintain. The author of 
Interwoven says (p. 221) that the first body and 
the second body differ greatly in their chemical 
particles, "and so the same degree of sight and 
hearing is not possible. . . . We have just as 
much trouble to see the outsides of things as mor- 
tals have to see the insides." 

Nor can we place a necessary limit to the birth 
of finer bodies. There may be a succession of 
such things. The electron brings us very near 
to a mental state; for whereas an Atom— con- 
ceived as similar to the speck of dust which one 
can roll between one's fingers, only much more 
minute — seems to have no relation to mentality, 
a tiny electric charge, capable of conveying 
a shock, comes very close ! And at that stage 
the truth becomes apparent that the inner in- 
telligent being in all things is the core, and the 
body is only the surface of contact — the sur- 
face, in fact, along which one intelligence ad- 
ministers shocks to another! With liberation 
from the gross body that surface may grow 



THE RETURN JOURNEY 25 I 

enormously extended, and it may become possible 
to touch or see, or to render oneself visible or 
tangible, to others far beyond all ordinary possi- 
bilities of contact or perception. 

The succession of finer bodies may exist in any 
gradation, from what we call gross matter to the 
subtlest ether of emotion. At any rate we can see 
that at every stage there will be a finer body which 
is more of the nature of thought, and an outer 
and coarser which is less so. As the gifted author 
of The Science of Peace, Bhagavan Das, says : — 
"At each stage the Jiva-core {i.e. the core of 
the living individual) consists of matter of the 
inner plane, while its outer upadhi (or sheath) 
consists of matter of the outer plane; and when 
a person says, I think, I act, it means that the 
matter of the inner core, which is the I, for the 
time being, is actually, positively, modified by, 
or is itself modifying in a certain manner, the 
outer real world." The inner film of matter (or 
mind), as he says, "is posing and masquerad- 
ing, for the time being, as the truly immaterial 
self." 

This central Self we can never wholly reach, 
but the movement of each divine soul is toward 
it; and the assurance and salvation of each soul 
is in the growing sense of union with it. The 
personal self can only 'survive' by ever fading and 
changing toward the universal. Our inner 
identity is fixed, but our outward identity we 
can only preserve by, as it were, forever 
losing it. 



2f2 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

After life's fitful fever — after the insurgence 
and resurgence of passions; after the heart-break- 
ing struggles which are forced upon some for the 
sake of a mere material footing upon the earth; 
after the deadly sufferings which others must 
undergo in order to gain scantiest allowance and 
expression of their inner and spiritual selves; 
after the mortal conflict and irreconcilableness of 
material and mental needs; the battles with 
opponents, the betrayal of friends, the fading and 
souring of pleasures, and the dissipation of ideals 
— the consent of mankind goes to affirm and con- 
firm the conclusion that sleep is well, sleep is de- 
sirable. As after a hard day's labor, when the 
sinews are torn and the mind is racked, Nature's 
soft nurse commends a period of rest and healing 
— so it would seem fitting that a similar period 
should follow, for the human soul, on the toil and 
the dislocation of life. 

It seems indeed probable — and a long tradition 
confirms the idea — that the human soul at death 
does at first pass, with its cloud-vesture of 
memories and qualities, into some intermediate 
region, astral rather than celestial (if we may use 
words which we do not understand), some Pur- 
gatory or Hades, rather than Paradise or 
Olympus; and for a long period does remain 
there quiescent, surveying its past, recovering 
from the shocks and outrages of mortal experi- 
ence, knitting up and smoothing out the broken 
and tangled threads, trying hard to understand 
the pattern. It seems probable that there is a 



THE RETURN JOURNEY 253 

long period of such digestion and reconcilement 
and slow brooding over the new life which has to 
be formed. Indeed when one comes to think of 
it, it seems difficult — if there is to be continuance 
at all — to imagine anything else. When one 
thinks of the strange contradictions of our mortal 
life, the hopelessly antagonistic elements, the war- 
ring of passions, the shattering of ideals, the 
stupor of monotony: the soul like a bird shut in 
a cage, or with bright wings draggled in the mire; 
the horrible sense of sin which torments some 
people, the mad impulses which tyrannize over 
others; the alternations of one's own personality 
on different days, or at different depths and planes 
of consciousness; the supraliminal and the sub- 
liminal; the smug Upper-self with its petty sat- 
isfactions and its precise and precious logic, and 
the great Under-self now rising (in the hour of 
death) like some vast shadowy figure or genius, 
out of the abyss of being — when one thinks of 
all this one feels that if there is to be any sanity 
or sequence in the conclusion, it must mean a long 
period of brooding and reconciliation, and of re- 
adjustment, and even of sleep. 

At first it may well be a troubled period, of 
nightmare-like confusion; but at last there must 
come a time when harmony is restored. The past 
lifetime is spread out like a map before one — ■ 
all its events fall into their places, composed and 
clear. The genius, rising from the depths, throws 
a strange light upon them. "This was necessary. 
That could not have been otherwise. And that 



254 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

again which seemed so fatal, do you not now 
see its profound meaning?" The soul survey- 
ing gradually redeems the past. It comes to 
understand. Tout comprendre, c' 'est tout par- 
do nner. It beholds, far down, the little fugitive 
among the shadows, pursued by the hideous and 
imbecile mask — the sense of Sin — and, recogniz- 
ing a fleeting embodiment of itself, it smiles : for 
that mask has been seen through and is useless 
any longer. It beholds another — or is it the 
same? — pursued by the Terror of Death; and 
again it smiles: for that shadow — like the vast 
moonshadow in a total eclipse of the sun, which 
seemed so solid and all-devouring, has swept by; 
it has been passed through, and it was only a 
shadow. 

And it may well be also that this whole process 
of reconciliation and adjustment and the building 
up of diverse elements into one harmonious being 
may occupy more than one such interval between 
two lifetimes; it may require several periods of 
incubation, so to speak. Looking at the matter 
from the physical side, and seeing how the inner 
and subtle body has probably to be formed dur- 
ing all this time — as in a chrysalis — and differen- 
tiated into an independent life, it seems likely 
that several intervals of outer rest and inner 
growth may be needed, and a series of successive 
moultings 1 But in the end, when the string of 
earth-lives is finished, and the reconciliation is 
complete, then the essential, the divine, self has 
become manifest, and is ready for a whole new 



THE RETURN JOURNEY 255 

world, a new order of experience, even to the 
farthest confines of the universe. 

I have suggested in a former chapter that 
Memory — that very wonderful faculty — is prob- 
ably our best test of Identity, our best test of 
Survival. If we apply this canon to the evolution 
of the independent soul out of the race-life, it 
may help us. When an animal dies, the group 
of memories, which is its life's-experience, prob- 
ably passes back and is transmitted in a more or 
less diffused way into the general race-life or 
soul. 1 In the case of some higher animals it is 
possible that the memory-group thus returning 
may cohere for a time or to a certain degree, and 
not be immediately diffused. In the case of the 
higher types of Man it is probable that such 
group may cohere for a long time and rather per- 
sistently; and though embedded in the general 
race-life and memory, and much mingled with and 
modified by these, it may still form to some de- 
gree an independent centre of intelligence and or- 
ganization (something like a nerve-plexus in the 
brain or body) . It will form, in fact, what I have 
already called a soul-bud or budding soul, and 
will be capable of that mixed or partial reincarna- 
tion of which I have spoken — in which some 



1 What the physical medium of this transmission may be — 
whether the germ-plasm of Weismann, or some subtle aura 
which connects the members of a race together, or anything 
else — is a question to which the answer at present is not very 
clear. 



256 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

truly individual streaks of memory will be mixed 
with general memories of race-life. 

But after each successive reincarnation the 
group of memories returning — and allying them- 
selves to the former groups — will necessarily give 
more and more definition to such budding soul, 
till at last the time will come when its individual- 
ity will be complete; its severance from the race- 
life will follow as a matter of course; and it will 
float out into the sea of the all-pervading and 
divine consciousness. 

During this budding period of the human soul, 
which generally speaking may be said to coincide 
with the civilization-period of human history, 
the memory of each earth-life will go back 
into the race-soul there to swell the nucleus of 
the individual soul which is being brought to 
birth; but it will not generally revive into evi- 
dence in the next earth-life, for, being so deeply 
buried within, it will be too much overlaid by 
external layers and happenings to come distinctly 
into consciousness. It is not probably till the 
completion of the whole series of its earth-lives 
that the soul will resume all these memories and 
come into its complete heritage. Then, at some 
deep stage or state all its incarnations (clarified 
and comprehended) will become manifest to it — 
a glorious kingdom beyond the imagination of 
man at present to conceive. All its various lives 
it may live over again; but with as much differ- 
ence in its understanding of their meaning as 
there is between an accomplished player's render- 



THE RETURN JOURNEY 257 

ing of a piece of music, and a child's first stum- 
bling performance of the same. 

It will perceive that, in a sense, it has pre- 
existed from eternity. For though certainly there 
was a time when it first sprang as a bud from the 
Race, and entered into a gradually evolving and 
self-defining series of personal lives, yet that first 
bud was itself but a particular limitation and 
condensation of the Race-self; and that again, 
far back and beyond, a limitation through many 
intermediate stages of the All-self. It (the 
human-divine soul) will perceive that it pre- 
existed from eternity as the All-self; that it suf- 
fered in its time the necessary obscurations and 
limitations; that it abdicated the high prerogative 
of universal consciousness; and that it was born 
again as a tiny Cinderella-spark; destined to rise 
through all the circles of personal and individual 
life, and the enacting of the great drama of 
Love and Death — the great cycle of Evolution 
and Transfiguration — once more to the eternal 
Throne. 

The glory of that Heaven where the All-self 
dwells radiant as the Sun, and each lesser or 
partial soul knows itself as a ray conveying the 
whole light, but in a direction of its own — we 
need not dwell on or attempt to portray. As 
the emancipated soul, just described, may include 
the personalities of many earth-lives and bodies, 
so there may be — probably are — larger inclusive 
selves, special gods, having troops of souls united 



258 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

to them in the bonds of love and devotion. 
Telepathic radiations, travelling as it were on 
lines of light, and with the velocity and direct- 
ness of light, bring each unit into possible touch 
with every other, and over an enormous field. 
As the modern theory of electricity supposes that 
every electric charge, however small, or associ- 
ated with the smallest atom, is connected by lines 
of force with some other and complementary 
charge somewhere — even perhaps at a practically 
infinite distance — negative with positive, and posi- 
tive with negative; so the idea is suggested that in 
the free world of the spirit every need felt by 
one atom of personality anywhere is felt also and 
answered to by some complementary impulse and 
personality somewhere. In the bringing together 
of these needs and affections, in the recovery and 
the building up and the presentation in sen- 
sible form of all the worlds of memory, 
slumber infinite possibilities, and the outlines of 
endless situations and developments. The in- 
dividual is clearly not lost in any 'Happy Mass' ; 
but may contribute to the formation of such a 
thing in the sense that he comes into such wide 
and extended touch with others as to have a 
practically unlimited range of experience, mem- 
ory, knowledge, creative power, and so forth, to 
draw on. 

Nor is there any call to think of a bodiless 
heaven or bodiless state of being in any plane of 
existence. The body in any stage or state is, 
I repeat, a surface of contact. Wherever one 



THE RETURN JOURNEY 259 

intelligent being comes into touch with another 
— whether actively, by impressing itself on the 
other, or passively by being impressed — there 
immediately arises a body. There arises the 
sense of matter, which is in fact the impression 
made by one being upon another. The external 
senses, of sight, hearing and the rest, are modi- 
fications or limitations of more extended inner 
faculties, of vision, audition, and so forth. The 
actual world of Nature which we know, in the 
bodies of the woods and streams, and of animals 
and men, is built up out of the material of our 
senses; out of the kind of impressionability of 
which our senses are susceptible; but if these 
materials, of our sight and hearing and touch 
and taste, were altered but slightly in their range, 
the whole world would be different. They would 
create for us another world. And so, if 
these present end-organs of sense were destroyed, 
the soul, furnished with the inner faculties cor- 
responding, would create another world of sense 
and of Nature, which would become the medium 
of expression and communication on that new 
plane, and the material of its bodily mani- 
festation there. At present, owing to entangle- 
ment in the grosser senses, life is certainly 
in the main a matter of food and drink, of sex, 
of money-making, and the exercise of rather rude 
recreations and arts. With a finer range of 
sense, there would still remain the roots and reali- 
ties of these things; the need of sustenance would 
still survive in the finer body, and the need 



260 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

of interchange and the indrawing of vitality; the 
hunger of union and of intercourse would remain 
— to be expressed in some shape or other; the 
delight in music and in beauty of form would 
be no less, though sounds and colors might be 
different from those we know; and all the facul- 
ties that we have — and others too that are 
now only embryonic with us — would demand their 
exercise and expression. Out of such demands 
and needs would arise a corresponding world. 

I have suggested above (ch. xi.) how, deep in 
the subliminal self, there lies a marvellous faculty 
of producing visible and audible phenomena — 
Visions and Voices and Forms. Out of the 
depths of being these can be evoked, and bodied 
forth into the actual world. 1 In other words, each 
such Self, in its moods of power, can call forth its 
own thoughts and mental images with such force 
as to impress them irresistibly on others within its 
range — with such force, in fact, as to give them a 
material vesture and location. What we have 
said of the vastness and range of the human Un- 
der-self, of its swift interrelation with others, of 
the immensity of its memory extending far back 
into the deeps of time, must convince us that its 
powers of creation must be correspondingly won- 
derful. The phenomena exhibited by entranced 
mediums, and by hypnotized subjects, are only a 
sample of these powers; but they hint dimly to 
us that when we understand ourselves, and what 

1 And not only out of the abysmal deeps of Man, but also 
out of the hidden soul of the Earth, and other cosmic beings. 



THE RETURN JOURNEY 26 1 

we are, and when we understand others, and what 
they are, Time and Space and Estrangement will 
no longer avail against us; they will no longer 
hinder us from recognition of each other, nor 
hold us back from the spheres to which we truly 
belong, and the fulfilment of our real needs and 
desires. 

Man is the Magician who whether in dreams 
or in trance or in actual life can, if he wills it, 
raise up and give reality to the forms of his desire 
and his love. It is not necessary for us feverishly 
to pursue our loved ones through all the fading 
and dissolving outlines of their future or their 
past embodiments. They are ours already, in the 
deepest sense — and one day we shall wake up to 
know we can call them at any moment to our 
side; we shall wake up to know that they are 
ever present and able to manifest themselves to 
us out of the unseen. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 

It will have been noticed that throughout this 
book there has been a tendency to return again 
and again to the question of what we mean by 
the Self. As I have said before (see ch. xii., 
supra), one might very naturally suppose that as 
the ego underruns all experience, and we cannot 
make any observation of the world at all except 
through its activity, the general problem of the 
nature of the ego would be the first to be at- 
tacked, and the very first to be solved; whereas, 
curiously enough, it seems to be the last! Only 
towards the conclusion of philosophical specula- 
tion does the importance of this problem force it- 
self on men's minds. Nevertheless, I think we may 
say that in the department of philosophy it is the 
great main problem which lies before this age for 
solution; and that one of the greatest services a 
man can do is — by psychologic study and mani- 
fold experience, by poetical expression, especially 
in lyrical form, and by philosophic thought and 
investigation — to make clear to himself and the 
world what he means by the letter 'I,' what he 
means by his 'self.' 

To the unthinking person nothing seems 

262 



THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 263 

simpler, more obvious, than his own existence — 
and hardly needing definition. Yet the least 
thought shows how complex and elusive this 'self 
is. It is one of those cases with which the world 
teems — a juggle of the open daylight — in 
which an object appears so perfectly simple, 
frank, innocent, and without concealment, and yet 
is really profoundly complex, deliberate, and un- 
fathomable. 

The most elementary considerations easily il- 
lustrate what I mean. 1 When we speak of the 
ego, do we mean the self of to-day, or of yester- 
day, or of some years back — or possibly some 
years in the future when we shall have found the 
expression now unhappily denied us? Do we 
mean the self of boyhood, or even of babyhood? 
or do we mean that of maturity, or of old age? 
Do we mean the self indicated by the mind alone, 
or by the spirit, apart from the body? or do we 
mean that indicated specially by the body, or even 
(as some folk seem to consider) by the clothes? 
It would be very puzzling to be asked to place 
one's finger, so to speak, on any one of these 
manifestations as really and completely repre- 
sentative. Rather perhaps we should be inclined, 
if pressed, to say that our real self was something 
underrunning all these forms — that it required 
all the expressions, from infancy, through matu- 
rity, even to old age, and all the apparatus of 
body and mind, in order to convey its meaning; 
and that to pin it down to any particular moment 

1 See supra, ch. vii. p. 122. 



264 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

of time, or to any particular phase of the material 
or spiritual, would be to do it a great injustice. 

If so, we seem at once compelled to think of 
the Self as something greatly larger than any 
ordinary form of it that we know, as something 
perhaps on a different plane of being — under- 
running, and therefore in a sense beyond, Time; 
and similarly underrunning, and therefore in a 
sense beyond, both body and mind. And this 
all the more, because, as I have said on an earlier 
page, we all feel that at best much of our real 
selves remains in life-long defect of expression; 
and that there are great deeps of the Under-self 
(as in chapter viii.) which, though organically re- 
lated to our ordinary consciousness, are still for 
the most part hidden and unexplored. All, in 
fact, points to the existence within us of a very 
profound self, which so far we may justifiably 
conclude to be much greater than any one known 
manifestation of it; which requires for its expres- 
sion the forms of a lifetime; and still stretches on 
and beyond; which perhaps belongs to another 
sphere of being — as the ship in the air and the 
sunlight belongs to another sphere than the hull 
buried deep in the water. 

But we may go further in our exploration of 
the "abysmal deeps." We have once or twice 
in the foregoing chapters alluded to the possi- 
bility of the self dividing into two personalities, 
or even more. We have supposed, for instance, 
that at death the psychic organism may possibly 
split up — some more terrestrial portion remaining 



THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 265 

operant and active on the earth-plane, and some 
other portion removing to a subtler and more 
ethereal region. Are we — we may ask — and 
those others who propound the same ideas 
talking nonsense in doing so? Is it anyhow pos- 
sible for a self to be active in two bodies or 
in two places at the same time? It may indeed 
seem impossible and absurd — until we envisage 
the actual facts; but when we do so, when we 
study the facts of the alternation of personalities, 
so much in evidence at the present time, when 
we find that two or more personalities, or 
coherent bodies of consciousness, may not only 
succeed each other in one human organism, but 
may simultaneously be active in the same, 1 when 
we find that there is such a thing as 'bilocation,' 
and that the apparition of a person may come 
and deliver a message while the original person 
is far away and otherwise engaged, when we no- 
tice carefully our own internal psychology and 
find that we not unfrequently "talk to ourselves" 
and in other ways behave as two persons in 
one body — we see that the absurdity or unlike- 
lihood of the suggestion may not by any 
means be so great as supposed, and that we may 
after all be forced to largely remodel our con- 
ception of what Personality is. 2 

1 See note at end of chapter vi. 

2 See, for instance, Homer's Odyssey, bk. xi., lines 601 et seq., 
where Odysseus speaks with the ghost of Hercules in Hades; 
but it is explained that Hercules himself is in Heaven: 

"Then in his might I beheld huge Hercules, phantom terrific, 
Phantom I say, for the hero himself is among the immortals." 



266 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

That one Personality should divide into two 
or more may seem to be foreign to our habitual 
views; yet we must remember that worms, anne- 
lids, and molluscs of various kinds commonly so 
divide; and though it is puzzling to think what be- 
comes of the T or 'self of a sea-anemone when 
the latter is cut in twain and each part goes its 
way as a new creature, we must not therefore 
refuse to envisage the fact and the problem thus 
flowing from it. As to the Protozoa, which 
certainly exhibit signs of considerable ■ intelli- 
gence, fission of one cell into two or more 
is one of the most normal and frequent events 
of their lives. The same, of course, is true 
of the elementary cells of the human body; 
the fission even of whole organs of the body is 
not uncommon, though more pathological in char- 
acter; and the fission of the personality, as just 
mentioned, is quite frequent; and in some cases 
— as in the well-known case of Sally Beauchamp 
— very striking, on account of the furious appar- 
ent opposition developed between one portion and 
another. 1 

The conception therefore of Personality must, 
it would seem, include the thought of possible 
bilocation — that is, of possible manifestation in 
two places at the same time; and it must not 
refuse the thought of inclusion — i.e. of one per- 
sonality being possibly included within another 

1 In this case, described by Dr. Morton Prince in his Dis- 
sociation of a Personality (see note to ch. vi., supra), at least 
four or five distinct personalities were recognizable in the one 
woman. 



THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 267 

— as of living and intelligent cells within the 
body. 1 Furthermore, we must not only allow 
division of self as one of the attributes of per- 
sonality, but also, apparently, fusion with other 
selves. This may seem far-fetched and un- 
reasonable at first, but on consideration we 
cannot but see that in one degree or another it 
is quite in the order of Nature. The Protozoa, 
of course, quite frequently combine with each 
other, and so make a new start in life; in the 
higher organisms the sperm-cell and germ-cell 
fuse completely for the conception of the off- 
spring, and the organisms themselves fuse par- 
tially and interchange elements during the process 
of conjunction; and in the psychology of love 
among human beings we notice a similar fusion, 
and sometimes also almost a confusion, of per- 
sonalities. 

The little self-conscious mind (of the civilized 
man) no doubt protests against all this. It de- 
sires to think of itself as a separate and definite 
entity, distinct from (and perhaps superior to) 
all others; and it finds any theories of possible 
fission or fusion of personalities quite baffling and 
impracticable. Yet in the light of the All-self — 
the key-thought of this book — the whole thing is 
obvious, and there is really no difficulty, except 
perhaps in the linking up (through memory) of 
the continuity of each lesser self. 

What we said in the last chapter, namely that 
"the personal self-consciousness can only survive 
^ee The Art of Creation, pp. 80, 81. 



268 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

by ever fading and changing toward the uni- 
versal," must be borne in mind. Continual ex- 
pansion is a normal condition of consciousness. 
Time is an integral element of it. 1 Consciousness 
must continually grow. Through memory it pre- 
serves the past, through the present it adds 
to its stores. The author of The Science of Peace 
illustrates the subject (p. 303) by asking us to 
consider the spheres of consciousness of various 
officials in a country whose departments more 
or less overlap each other: "There are adminis- 
trative officers in charge of each department, 
whose consciousness may be said to include the 
consciousness of their subordinates in that depart- 
ment, to exclude those of their compeers, and to 
be in turn included in those of their superiors. 
The more complicated the machinery of the 
government, the better the illustration will be 
of inclusions and exclusions and partial or 
complete coincidences, and overlappings and 
communions of consciousness. At last we come 
to the head of the government, whose conscious- 
ness may be said to include the consciousnesses, 
whose knowledge and power include the knowl- 
edges and powers of all the public servants in 
the land, and whose consciousness is so expanded 
as to enable him to be in touch with them all and 
feel and act through them all constantly. An 
officer promoted through the grades of such an 
administration would clearly pass through ex- 
pansions of consciousness. . . . Such expansion 

1 See Bergson's L'Evolution Creatrice throughout. 



THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 269 

of consciousness, then, is not in its nature more 
mysterious and recondite than any other item 
in the world-process, but a thing of daily and 
hourly occurrence. In terms of metaphysic it 
is the coming of an individual Self into relation 
with a larger and larger not-self." 

In the light of the All-self, I say, the difficulties 
disappear. It is the question of Memory (explicit 
or implicit) which seems to decide the limits 
of personalities and their survival. The One 
Self is experiencing in all forms, but the stores 
of experience and memory are kept separate. 
Here is a man who has a Town house and a 
Country house and an Italian villa. When he 
changes his abode from one to the other he 
becomes to a great extent a different person. 
His surroundings and associations, his pursuits 
and occupations, his dress and habits, his language 
may be, are changed. It may even happen that 
each of his three lives goes on growing and ex- 
panding after its own pattern, and becoming more 
and more different from the two others; and yet 
the ultimate person behind them all remains the 
same. Is it not possible that the lives of us hu- 
man beings may go on expanding and growing 
each according to its own law, and yet the ulti- 
mate individual or Being behind them all may 
remain the same? 

If a worm be supposed to have memory (and 
worms no doubt have memory in some degree), 
then it might well be supposed that, if divided 
in two, each of the parts would inherit the 






270 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

said memory complete. But from that moment 
the experiences of the two portions, moving in 
different directions, would bifurcate, and the fu- 
ture stores of memory would be different. Thus 
we should have a bifurcation of the stream of 
memory, and a bifurcation of personality — until 
ultimately, as time went on, and the common 
memory faded into the background, the two new 
personalities would begin to feel themselves 
almost quite separate. Is not this again some- 
thing like what may have happened to ourselves 
from Creation's birth? The stream of life has 
bifurcated and bifurcated till we have lost our 
common memory and have become convinced of 
the absolute separation of our personalities one 
from the other. 

On the other hand, the conjunction and fusion 
of two streams of memory in one is as probable 
and intelligible as the bifurcation of one into two. 
Two protozoa fuse; but the race-self in one 
is the same as in the other, and in reality the 
process is only a fusion of organic memories 
and experiences. A man who had been in the 
habit of changing every year from his Town to 
his Country house might some day find it 
convenient to combine his establishments in one 
suburban residence. Certainly if he had so far 
forgot himself that in changing houses he had 
always quite changed his memories, then it would 
seem impossible to him to combine the two lives 
in one. Otherwise there would be no difficulty 
in the process. The stores of one establishment, 



THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 27 1 

with their associations and memories would after 
a time (and not without some maturation-divi- 
sions and extrusions!) be got into relation with 
the stores of the other establishment; and the two 
bodies of memory and association would settle 
down together. 

All this seems to suggest to us that our con- 
ception of personality must be considerably al- 
tered from its ordinary form, and rendered more 
fluent, in order to tally with the real facts. There 
is no such thing as a fixed and limited personality, 
of definite content and character, which we can 
credit to our account, or to the account of our 
friends. All is in flux and change, the conscious- 
ness ever enlarging, the ego which is at the root 
of that consciousness ever growing in the knowl- 
edge of itself as a vital portion of the All-self. 
That last alone is fixed; that alone as the 'uni- 
versal witness' is permanent. But the streams of 
memory and experience, by which from all sides 
that central fact and consciousness is reached, are 
infinite in number and variety. It is in the con- 
tinuity of a stream of memory that what we call 
personality must be supposed to consist; and 
when this continuity covers not only a single life, 
but extends from life to life, then we must find 
a new name for the persistent being and call him 
not a personality, but, if we will, an individuality. 
Such individualities must exist by millions and 
billions; they must be as numerous as all the 
possible lines of experience (and these are 



272 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

quasi-infinite in number) by which the soul may 
grow from its birth in the simplest speck of 
matter to its realization of divine and universal 
life. The author (Bhagavan Das) of The Sci- 
ence of Peace illustrates this infinitude of indi- 
vidualities, and how they are all contained in the 
All-self, and each in a sense as an aspect of the 
One, by the simile of a museum or gallery. "If 
a spectator," he says (p. 289), "wondered un- 
restingly through the halls of a vast museum or 
great art gallery, at the dead of night, with a sin- 
gle small lamp in one hand, each of the natural 
objects, the pictured scenes, the statues, the 
portraits, would be illumined by that lamp in 
succession for a single moment, while all the 
rest were in darkness, and after that single 
moment would fall into darkness again. Let 
there now be not one but countless such specta- 
tors, as many in endless numbers as the objects of 
sight within the place, each spectator wandering 
in and out incessantly through the great crowd 
of all the others, each lamp bringing momentarily 
into light one object, and for only that spectator 
who holds that lamp." Then he goes on to 
say that each line or succession of experi- 
ences might represent an individuality; each indi- 
viduality in the end would reach the totality of 
experience, but in a different order and in a 
different manner from any other; and all the 
individualities would all the time — though chang- 
ing themselves — remain within the unchanging 
intelligence of the absolute, and would only be ex- 



THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 273 

ploring that intelligence each in a different order. 
"For," he again says (p. 317), "an individuality 
can no otherwise be described, discriminated and 
fixed, than by enumerating the experiences of that 
individual, by narrating its biography." 

We may also illustrate the matter by the con- 
ception of a Tree. A single leaf at the end of 
a twig may seem to have a little separate self of 
its own; but it is very ephemeral. It perishes 
with the season and another leaf takes its place. 
There is a deeper self, in the twig, which endures, 
and from which new leaves spring. And again 
the twig springs from a small spray, which is the 
source of other twigs and leaves. Should the leaf 
desire to trace its complete and total self it would 
have to follow its life-line through the twig and 
the spray, to the branch, and so right down to 
the central trunk. It could not stop at any half- 
way point, and say, This is my final self. But 
on its way to the trunk, at different points, it 
would find that its sap or life was flowing into 
other twigs and leaves, as well as the twig and 
leaf first mentioned. It would come into relation, 
so to speak, with other bodies beside the first. 
If we were to call the first leaf and twig a per- 
sonality we should have to call some deeper self 
involving many twigs and leaves an Individuality, 
and so on to the All-self of the tree. The self 
of every leaf would approach the main trunk 
along a different line, and through various ranges 
of individuality; but all would ultimately par- 
ticipate in one whole. 



274 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

I think some such view is clearly the most 
satisfactory way of looking at the matter. We 
are all essentially one; our differentiation from 
each other does not consist in differences in the 
central ego, but in the different lines of experience 
and memory. We can none of us boast, at any 
point, of a rounded, definite and stationary self, 
apart from all others; but we are all approaching 
the universal from different sides. Yet, also, it 
is perfectly true that consciousness is born in us 
first through our very limitations. Through the 
very obstacles that surround us, and through the 
things that seem to divide us from others, first 
simple consciousness and then self-consciousness 
are born. Then comes a time when the limita- 
tions and the barriers become intolerable. The 
soul that at first gloried in them comes to find 
the burden of self-consciousness too great. Why 
should it be forever John Smith? As Mrs. Stet- 
son says: — 

"What an exceeding rest 'twill be 
When I can leave off being Me ! . . . 
Done with the varying distress 
Of retroactive consciousness! . . . 
Why should I long to have John Smith 
Eternally to struggle with?" 

When the consciousness arises of this fact, that 
we need not be tied to John Smith forever — that 
our real self is far vaster, and essentially one with 
others, then in each of us the Divine Soul is born; 
a vista of glory and splendor opens in front, and 



THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 275 

on all sides the barriers fall to the ground. On 
the way to this supreme conclusion the stream of 
memories which one calls oneself may of course 
take on form after form; it may bifurcate, or it 
may fuse with other streams. That does not very 
much matter. The real identity, once established, 
can hardly be lost. For every leaf there is a chan- 
nel of sap which connects it with the main trunk. 
Personality is real, but it yields itself up in the 
greater Individual of which it is the expression; 
and the individual or divine soul is real — enduring 
perhaps many thousands of years — but it yields 
itself up ultimately in the All. Finally, in that 
union, Memory itself, in its mortal form, ceases, 
for it is swallowed up in actual realization, in the 
power of actual presence in all space and time. 
The divine soul which has thus completed its 
union needs memory no more. It is there wher- 
ever it desires to be. As the author of Siderische 
Geburt (Berlin, 19 10) says, "We mortals are 
separated from the divine all-embracing universal 
Vision; and Memory is only a first glimmering re- 
awakening — a beginning of renewed seraphic life 
and a coming into relation with all that lies be- 
yond the little world-corner of our presence." 1 

At first sight, and to one who does not yet 
realize the inner unity of being, these views on 
the nature of Personality and Individuality may 



1 "Der Beginn des erneuten seraphischen Lebens und Ein- 
beziehung alles dessen, was ausser der Gegenwartsenge liegt." 



276 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

appear strange and even painful. For such a 
person the thought of the dissociation of his 
'self,' of its separation into two or more parts — 
either in life or in death — and the divergence of 
the two parts from each other, must be grotesque 
and terrible, and verging even towards madness. 
And so also must be the thought of the possible 
dissociation of the personalities of his friends. 
And yet it may be necessary for us at length and 
by degrees to understand and assimilate such a 
view. Certain it is that, as we come to under- 
stand it, we shall see that any dissociation that 
may occur can only be of the superficial elements 
— something of the nature of a divergence of the 
chains of memory; and that dissociation of the 
real and intimate self is a thing quite impossible. 
We shall see that by degrees the self may learn 
to deal with such dissociations, and to express 
itself in various guises, and in more than one 
personality at a time. If, for instance, there 
does occur at death a certain break-up of the 
psychic organism — if the animal soul, and the 
human soul, and the divine soul do to a certain 
extent part from each other and go along different 
ways, we may see that it is quite possible that 
the personal stream of memory may correspond- 
ingly branch in different directions. One portion 
of the consciousness, having always been animal 
and terrestrial in character, may identify itself 
mainly with the animal vitality of the residue and 
its corresponding memories — and may persevere 
for some time as a wandering passional centre, 



THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 277 

liable to attach itself to the organisms of living 
folk, or to figure as a 'ghost' of very limited 
activities and occupied with eternal repetitions of 
the same action; another portion, more distinctly 
human, may linger in some intermediate state, 
partly in touch with the earth-life and the souls 
of mortal friends, yet partly drawn onward into 
wider spheres; and may function on for a long 
time in a kind of dreamland — creating perhaps 
the objects of its own consumption till it wearies 
of them, or building up imaginative worlds of 
occupations and activities similar to our own, as 
in "the happy hunting grounds" of Indians, or 
the worlds described from time to time by me- 
diumistic 'controls. ' And again a third portion 
may pass into that far wider and grander state 
of being which we have described — that of the 
'divine' soul which recognizes its equality and 
unity with all others, and its freedom of the 
whole universe. In all these cases the main 
stream of memory, branching, must pour it- 
self into the section of life which follows, and 
render the latter quite continuous with the former 
— though naturally with some differences, both in 
the memories transmitted, and in the degrees of 
community, in each case. 

We may apply these considerations to the ques- 
tion of the messages and apparitions from the 
unseen world which have been alluded to in 
former chapters. How far or in what spe- 
cial way these communications really represent 
the active and continuing consciousness of our 



278 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

departed friends is a question which is generally 
admitted to be most doubtful and difficult. And 
its difficulty is not lessened, I think, by our 
conclusions (so far) on the nature of Personality. 
If the stream of a man's earth-life memory may 
diverge at death into two or more streams, then 
it must remain difficult for us to say whether the 
communication which is coming to us proceeds 
from a mere overflow of that stream, which has 
eddied itself, so to speak, into the brain of 
the medium; or from some 'astral' shell of 
the departed one, which has already begun decay- 
ing and dissipating, in our atmosphere; or again 
from the true soul of the man which is pushing 
forward into the world beyond. Probably we do 
not yet know enough about the matter to form 
decisive judgments. In either case the memory 
exhibited may be surprisingly perfect. And it 
seems to me that in most cases nothing but per- 
sonal evidence and personal detail, even down 
to the minutest points, can decide — and even 
then not in such a way as to decide for others. 
And perhaps it is best and most natural so. In 
our world of ordinary life it is so. If an appar- 
ent stranger turns up from the other side of the 
earth and claims a far-back acquaintance; if an- 
other makes the same claim over the telephone; 
if a known friend behaves strangely, and we are 
in doubt whether to attribute his conduct to 
bona fides or to incipient madness; in these and 
a thousand other cases, personal relationship and 
personal understanding (though by no means un- 






THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 279 

erring) count for more than all science and legal 
proof. And perhaps this is the healthiest way 
to take the subject: not to be over-curious or 
speculative or sentimental, but where solid help 
and a permanent and useful relationship seems 
to be gained, there to accept the communi- 
cations as so far commending and justifying 
themselves. 

If, as I have just said, there is something a 
little disquieting and even terrible in the thought 
that our personality may thus be subject to rup- 
ture or dissociation into two or more portions, 
that matter after all depends upon how we look 
upon it — whether from below, as it were, or from 
above. There is nothing particularly terrible in 
the thought that our bodily organs and parts — 
our "Little Marys," and so forth — may have 
(probably do have) very distinct personalities of 
their own. We look down upon them, so to 
speak, and include them. And we shall one day 
no doubt, and in the realization of our greater 
selves, have the splendid experience of including 
two (or more) bodies — of having them at our 
service, and available for command and expres- 
sion. Even now we are sometimes conscious of 
having one envelope of a more ethereal and in- 
tense nature, swift and far-reaching both in move- 
ment and perception in the innermost regions, and 
another more local body, in touch with terrestrial 
life. And there would be nothing surprising or 
dreadful in finding, after death, that an ethereal 
and a terrestrial body were both still at our 



280 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

command — though both perhaps more developed 
and more differentiated from each other than at 
present; — or even that we might be capable of 
inhabiting several such bodies. 

It is of course puzzling, under our ordinary 
conceptions of Space and Time, to imagine how it 
could be possible to deal with several bodies at 
the same time; but in reality it is no more puz- 
zling than the problem which we habitually solve 
every day and every hour of our lives. How 
do we, for instance, deal with and dispose 
the activities of our hands and our feet and our 
eyes and our brain, with simultaneous care, say, 
in walking through the streets? We inhabit 
these separate organs, these distinct personalities, 
simultaneously, and ordain their movements and 
gather in their perceptions by the act of attention. 
Attention in the world of the spirit corresponds 
to extension in the physical world. Whatever 
your spirit attends to, that some physical radia- 
tion from yourself extends to. And similarly if 
you had bodies in different worlds and regions, 
by the simple act of attention your spirit would 
reach them. Nevertheless — to return to the one 
body and the various organs, like hands and feet 
and eyes, which we seem to have under control — 
it is clear that our minds could not possibly over- 
look all the details of their management, unless 
there were some general ordaining spirit in the 
body which was in close touch and sympathy, and 
ready to act with and aid us; and similarly 
it is clear that we could not ordain and or- 



THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 28 1 

ganize any movement of a secondary body at 
a distance — even though 'belonging' to us — un- 
less there were a spirit, in that body and the in- 
tervening spaces, in touch and sympathy with 
ours. It is the knowledge that there is such a 
community of life, such an abounding Self, which 
gives the 'divine' soul its great joy and its great 
power — "for whatever he desires, that he obtains 
from the Self." He who knows has indeed the 
freedom of the universe, and of all its powers — 
who knows that the Spirit of the whole is his 
own. 

It is natural therefore to suppose that that 
portion of the consciousness which has circled and 
centred very definitely and conclusively round the 
All-self — or such aspect of the same as spe- 
cially belongs to it; or (what perhaps comes 
to the same thing) has circled very definitely 
round the divine soul of a loved one; will pass 
through death easily and without much loss of 
continuity. It will with its attendant memories 
pass easily and continuously into the inmost 
sphere; or (to put the matter in another way) 
remaining in that sphere it will simply become 
aware that a mass of husks have been shed off, 
which clouded it. It will become aware of the 
glorious state of being to which it has always 
implicitly belonged, and of its connection with 
not one only but many bodies. 

It may be — and I think one almost feels that 
it must be — that the most intimate self of any of 
us cannot be realized short of externalization in 



282 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

a vast number of separate manifestations or lives. 
One has the impression with regard to one's body, 
that "this is one of my bodies"; or that "this 
body represents a portion of myself"; but one 
does not feel "this body represents my total, com- 
plete and final self." And as we have just sug- 
gested that in a more intimate state of being we 
may become distinctly aware of having rela- 
tion to several bodies simultaneously, so the 
world-old doctrine of reincarnation in its general 
form has long suggested that our most intimate 
selves are related to a great number of bodies in 
succession to each other in Time. The higher or 
inner Individual — of agelong and aeonian life — is 
reincarnated (it is said) thousands of times; thus 
to embody that aspect of the Divine which it 
represents. 

These embodiments may be in forms by no 
means resembling each other — though doubtless 
there will be a thread of similarity running 
through; and one embodiment may have little 
idea (except in moments of inspiration) of its 
relation to the others, or of any continuity of 
memory between itself and the others. Yet the 
memories of these lives and embodiments passing 
into the inner sphere are ultimately gathered to- 
gether and drawn up to constitute that most 
glorious world of each Being of which we 
have spoken — a world in which each over- 
looks and ordains its various lives and mani- 
festations as from a mountain-top. These are 
indeed "the ageless immortal gods who seek ever 



THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 283 

to come in the forms of men" — whom we ever 
and anon seem to feel and hear knocking at 
the inner door of our little local selves, as 
though they would gain admittance and ac- 
knowledgment. 



CHAPTER XVI 

CONCLUSION 

And so we seem to find — in the farthest and lofti- 
est reaches of life, as in its first beginnings — 
Love and Death strangely linked and strangely 
related. Changing their form but not their es- 
sence they accompany us to the last; and we fore- 
bode them, in the final account, as no longer the 
tyrannous and often terrible over-lords of our 
mortal days, but rather our most indispensable 
companions without whom life in its higher 
ranges could not well be maintained. 

For a time, certainly, we cling to our limited 
and tiny self-life and consciousness; and deem 
that all good resides in the careful guarding of 
the same. But again there comes a time when 
the bounds of personality confine and chafe be- 
yond endurance, when an immense rage sweeps 
us far out into the great ocean; when to save our 
lives we deliberately lose them; when Death be- 
comes a passion even as Love is. 

The mystery of mortal life clears, or dissolves 
away, by our passing in a sense beyond personal- 
ity; and the hour arrives when we look down on 
these local days, these self-limitations, as phases 

284 






CONCLUSION 285 

1 — phases of some far vaster state of being. 
Death is the necessary door by which we pass 
from one such phase to another; and Love is 
even a similar door. 

Growing silently within there emerges at last 
something which has its home in the great spaces, 
which dives under and through Death, and is the 
companion of Titanic and Cosmic beings; some- 
thing strangely surpassing all barriers and limits, 
and strangely finding identity by fusing and losing 
it in the life of others; something which at times 
seems almost mockingly to abandon its own iden- 
tity and rise creative in new forms — sporting in 
the great ocean; and yet can somehow instantly 
recall its past and the tiny limits from which it 
first sprang — trailing forever with it the wonder- 
ful cloud-wreaths of earth-memory and associ- 
ation, and the myriad fragrance of personal re- 
membrance. "What are thou then?" says the 
poet, addressing his departed friend: — 

"What art thou then? — I cannot guess; 
But tho' I seem in star and flower 
To feel thee some diffusive power 
I do not therefore love thee less." 

Even in the farthest spheres the poignant syl- 
lables T and 'Thou' will surely still be heard; and 
a thousand deaths shall not avail to exhaust their 
meaning or to make of Love a pale and cold ab- 
straction. 

The memory of the earth-life and of personal 



286 THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH 

identity is never lost; but it passes out into that 
far greater form, the memory and resumptioi 
into a coherent Whole of many lives, and the 
sense of an Individuality which has value because 
it is merged in and is an expression of the All. 
Memory indeed changes from being the faint 
dream-shadow that we know, of things in the 
past, to being the things themselves, actual and 
ever present at our command; and with this find- 
ing of the inner soul and heart's core of all beings 
it becomes possible to live over again with them 
the days gone by, in all detail and with ever 
deeper understanding of their true meaning. 

The supra-liminal returns into harmony with 
the subliminal; the individual life and the mass- 
life are reunited. With the overpassing of the 
local and terrestrial self we are liberated into a 
fluid region where a thousand personalities yield 
their secrets and their co-operation into our hands. 
With the releasing of our attention from personal 
objects and terrestrial gains, materials and people 
correspondingly cease to obstruct. They find 
nothing which they can obstruct! The body 
moves freely about the world; life ceases to be 
the 'obstacle race' and the queer perpetual vista 
of barricades which it mostly now is; and a for-' 
tiori the soul moves freely, because truly for 
the redeemed soul it is possible to feel that all 
things and creatures are friendly, all beings a part 
of itself. These and many other such realizations 
are indeed possible now — even in our present ter- 
restrial state — under those rare conditions when 



CONCLUSION 287 

the divine creature which is within the mortal 
body achieves a momentary deliverance, and 
under which we sometimes pass out of our little 
mundane dream into that other land where the 
great Voices sound and Visions dwell. 



APPENDIX 



SUMMARY OF CHAPTER II 

1. Every kind of cell or other organism has a natural 
limit of size (dependent partly on the relation between 
surface and volume). 

2. When that limit is reached, superfluity of nutrition 
and growth tends to bring about Reproduction. 

3. Reproduction begins with simple division or bud- 
ding. 

4. Conjugation in its primitive form (as among pro- 
tozoa where there is no distinction of sex) takes place 
between similars, and is an exchange to some degree of 
cell-contents. 

5. It apparently affords a superior nutrition, and is 
a kind of Regeneration, essential to the continued health 
of the species, and favorable to reproduction. 

6. Hunger and Love are thus related at this stage. 

7. Later, conjugation takes place between dissimilars 
(of the same species) ; and the distinct phenomena of 
sex appear — of male and female. 

8. Reproduction by simple division or budding leads to 
a kind of 'immortality,' since each descendant cell is 
continuous, in a sense, with the original one. 

9. This simple division or virgin-birth process may 
go on to many generations — even to hundreds among 
the Protozoa. 

10. But since at some time or other conjugation is 
apparently necessary in order to restore vitality, the 
immortality at this point ceases to be an individual im- 
mortality, and becomes rather a joint or racial immor- 
tality. 

11. The main thing in conjugation would appear to 

290 



APPENDIX 29I 

be that the two factors should be complementary to each 
other, however differentiated, so that in their union the 
whole race-life should be restored, and the Regeneration 
therefore be complete. 

12. The special sex-differentiation called male and 
female depends on the separation of the active from the 
sessile qualities (and other qualities respectively related 
to each) into two great branches. 

13. Since the female takes the sessile part she appears 
sometimes as the goal and object of conjugation, and the 
more important factor; but actual observation so far 
shows each factor, male and female, to be equally im- 
portant. 

14. In the fertilized ovum there are an equal number 
of chromosomes derived from each parent; and if the 
female provides the shrine in which the new develop- 
ment takes place, the male (centrosome) appears as the 
organizing genius of the process. 

15. This process, by which a fertilized germ-cell di- 
vides and redivides, and so builds up a "body," is quite 
similar to that by which a protozoon divides and re- 
divides to form a numerous colony. 

16. A 'body' indeed is such a colony, cooperatively 
associated in definite form, of which all the millions of 
cells are practically continuous with the original fertilized 
germ, and one with it. 

17. Every cell in such a body has apparently the same 
nuclear elements as the original cell, equally derived 
from both parents; but is differentiated so far as to be 
able to fulfil its special part in the body. 

18. The process of division of these microscopic cells; 
is strangely exact and complex; and the various elements 
of the nucleus seem to be themselves divided into two, 
on each occasion, with strange preciseness. 

19. The constituent cells of each race of animals have 
always a certain number of nuclear threads or chromo- 
somes — fixed for that particular race. 

20. When, therefore, a sperm-cell and germ-cell unite, 



292 SUMMARY OF CHAPTER II 

they each first extrude or expel half the number of their 
chromosomes, so that after union the joint cell is pro- 
vided again with the precise number of chromosomes 
characteristic of the race. 

21. The exact nature of these 'maturation' divisions 
and expulsions is far from clear; but it would seem that 
they are carried out in such a way as, while retaining 
always the basic elements of the Race, to secure a con- 
tinual and endless sorting of these into new combina- 
tions. 

22. These complex evolutions occurring, as described, 
in the interior of the most primitive cells, look as much 
like the last results of some far antecedent or invisible 
operations (of which we know nothing) as like the first 
commencement of the visible organic world with which 
we are acquainted. 






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